“No waste, dear Aunt Olive,” said Barnabas imperturbably. He had calmly given her the title one day, and it had been adopted by the five other artists of the courtyard. It had pleased Miss Mason immensely, though she occasionally pretended to look upon it as an impertinence. “No waste, dear Aunt Olive. The enormous benefit I invariably derive from your conversation is of incalculably greater advantage to me than the time I should otherwise spend in dabbing paint on canvas. The canvas is always destroyed at the end of two hours, unless the subject happens to be a commission. Your conversation abides for ever engraven on my memory.”
“Barnabas, you’re a fool,” retorted Miss Mason. “Besides, if you were not here I should paint a still life.”
“Oranges against a green or blue earthenware jar—I know,” said Barnabas sorrowfully. “Dear aunt, cui bono? You have dozens of oranges already on canvas, to say nothing of the blue and green jars. You could paint them in your sleep. Why make another representation of them?”
“Don’t mock at my work,” said Miss Mason severely. “You have a lifetime before you, and can afford to waste mornings. I cannot. Remember my age.”
“I’ll try to do so, since you wish it,” returned Barnabas. “It is, however, the one thing I invariably forget.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Mason. “However, if you won’t go, where is my knitting? I can’t sit entirely idle.”
She took a bundle of white woolwork from a side table. Two steel knitting-needles were stuck into it. She sat down in the big oak chair by the fire, and in a moment the needles were clicking busily. She looked more like one of the three Fates than ever. And somewhere away in a back street a scrap of humanity must have heard the clicking needles, and a thread of white wool must have stretched out invisibly to draw it towards the hands that held them. Though at the moment Miss Mason knitted serenely unconscious of the fact.
Barnabas watched her in silence.
“For the poor?” he asked politely, after a couple of minutes.
“Babies,” said Miss Mason shortly. “They get little enough welcome, poor mites; but knowing that a white jacket with a bit of blue ribbon run through it is waiting for them, helps the mothers to look forward to their advent with a certain degree of pleasure. It’s curious, the effect of little things.”