‘Isn’t that too lovely?’ she asked.
Edward examined the sketch with a critical air.
‘I don’t want you to suppose I’m trying to flatter you,’ he said at last, ‘but, upon my word, this little sketch is as good as anything of Chicot’s, and very much in his style.’
‘It is the only accomplishment of my husband’s that I cannot praise,’ said Laura, with gentlest reproof, ‘for it cannot be exercised without unkindness to the subject of the caricature.’
‘“He that is robbed not wanting what is stolen, let him not know it, and he is not robbed,”’ quoted Celia, who had resumed her lowly place at Laura’s feet. ‘Shakespeare’s ineffable wisdom found that out; and may not the same thing be said of caricature? If Lady Barker never knows what a lifelike portrait you have drawn of her, with half-a-dozen scratches of a Hindoo pen, the faithfulness of the picture can’t hurt her.’
‘But isn’t it the usual course to show that kind of thing to all the lady’s particular friends, till the knowledge of it percolates to the lady herself?’ inquired Edward with his lazy sneer.
‘I had rather cut off my right hand than make a harmless good-natured old lady unhappy,’ said Laura, warmly.
‘Turn up your cuff, Mr. Treverton, and prepare your wrist for the chopper,’ cried Celia. ‘But really now, if Lady Barker’s figure is like a dilapidated mould of jelly, she ought to know it. Did not one of those seven old plagues of Greece, whose names nobody ever could remember, resolve all the wisdom of his life into that one precept, “Know thyself”?’
Celia rattled on gaily; Laura and Edward both joined in her careless talk; but John Treverton sat grave and silent, looking at the fire.