"You look like a gladiator, Cousin Antony," Bella cried; "you must have a perfectly splendid muscle."
He bared his right arm, carried away by his recitation and the picture evoked. The children admired the sinews and the swelling biceps. Gardiner touched it with his little fingers; the muscular firm arm, ending in the vigorous wrist, held their fascinated gaze. The sculptor himself looked up it with pardonable approval.
"Feel mine," said Gardiner, crimson with the exertion of lifting his tiny arm to the position of his cousin's.
"Immense, Gardiner!" Fairfax complimented, "immense."
"Feel mine," cried Bella, and the sculptor touched between his fingers the fine little member.
"Great, little cousin!"
"I'll be the gladiator's wife and applaud him from the Coliseum and throw flowers on him."
Fairfax lingered with them another hour, laughing at his simplicity in finding them such companions. With compunction, he endeavoured to take up his lesson again with Bella, unwilling and recalcitrant. She drew a few half-hearted circles, a page of wobbly lines, and at the suspicion of tears Fairfax desisted, surprised to find how the idea of tears from her touched him. Then in the window between them, he watched as the children told him they always did, for "mother's car to come home."
"She is sharping," exclaimed Gardiner, slowly; "she has to sharp very hard, my mother does. She comes back in the cars, only she never comes," he finished with patient fatality.
"Silly," exclaimed his sister, "she always comes at dinner-time. And we bet on the cars, Cousin Antony. Now let's say it will be the seventy-first. We have to put it far away off," she explained, "'cause we're beginning early."