‘Most certainly they will,’ responded the artist confidently. ‘This will be a lovely thing when it is done. I shall come here to-morrow and make a careful study of this stook against which you are lying, and of the field; and I shall look about for a few good types of harvesters to put in the middle distance.’ He was speaking more to himself than to her, but Rosalie listened with deep interest, and watched him sharply through her half-closed lids. Suddenly she saw him laugh.
‘Perhaps if I come across a very attractive specimen of a rustic, I may place him just behind the stook here, peering through the sheaves at you, or bending forward as if he were going to—’
‘Oh, don’t,’ cried Rosalie, starting violently and opening her eyes wide. ‘No, I won’t have it, I won’t be in the picture at all if you put anything of that kind in!’
‘Not—if I chose a particularly nice young man?’ inquired the painter, still laughing softly to himself. ‘Not if I chose—the young man?’
‘I am sure I don’t know what you mean,’ protested she, her cheeks crimson again and her lips quivering. ‘There is no young man.’
‘Do you mean to tell me, my dear child, that with that face you have lived till now without anyone courting you—as I suppose they would call it?’
‘Oh, of course they court me,’ Rosalie hastened to admit; ‘but I hate them all. And they are all very ugly,’ she added eagerly, ‘and would look dreadful in a picture.’
‘There, you are frowning again. Come, let us talk of something less exciting. Keep still, please. So you make butter three times a week, do you? You are a farmer’s daughter, I suppose?’
‘I was a farmer’s granddaughter,’ she returned. ‘My father was a schoolmaster.’
‘Ah, that accounts for your educated way of speaking.’