"What's that?" said Hilda, glancing up from the book. "Got in? Oh, have you—how nice!"
"What do they say?" inquired the old man. "Let me see!"
"It's a ticket for varnishing day," she said. "I wonder how I'm hung."
"Very odd," he remarked, "that they didn't send it you before." He read the ticket attentively, pursing his lips, and turned it over, as if a clue to the delay might be discovered at the back. "What did I tell you? I knew it would be all right. A pity you wasted such a lot on the frame now, eh, my dear?"
She could not perceive that the mistake was demonstrated, but his legitimate triumphs were so few that it would have been petty of her to grudge him an illusory one. "It must have been among the doubtfuls," she explained—"the pictures they didn't make up their minds about at once—that's why I didn't hear before."
"Of course," he said, "there are pictures that are put away to be examined again; the committee can't decide about them right off. Whether they are, taken eventually depends—er—depends on circumstances. They are called the 'doubtfuls.'" He returned her information to her with the air of letting her into a secret. "I expect they thought it a bit dull, you know—a bit dull. It's pretty—it's a pretty thing—but it wants more sunshine. It isn't bright enough. You haven't got the blaze of the gorse into it; that's what you've failed in—you haven't got the blaze of the gorse."
"It's eight o'clock in the evening," she said. "The title is 'The Sun's Last Rays.'"
The sunshine was paling from her spirits too. Extraordinary, she reflected, that it was possible for those who always meant well always to miss saying the things one wanted to hear. Both he and Hilda were genuinely pleased—she knew it—yet how flat the news had fallen! And neither of them had cried, "I wonder how you're hung!"
"Y-e-s, you don't convey the glory of summer, unfortunately; the thing isn't gay enough; there's no heat in it, no glare. That's what's the matter with it, my dear—there isn't the glare there should be. Now, to do justice to that scene, to paint it to advantage, you should have shown it on a scorching afternoon, under a vivid sky. The tramp on the seat should have been hot—mopping his forehead. There might even have been a touch of humour in the figure of the tramp. As it is, he only looks tired. You understand what I mean?"
"Oh yes," she murmured, "I understand. But that isn't the picture I wanted to do. I meant the wayfarer to look tired. I wanted to get what George Eliot called 'the sadness of a summer's evening' into it."