Dissatisfied with his work, MacGregor presently caught his canvas from the easel, and, laying it prone upon the floor, began by shifting strips of card-board to hunt the truer composition. Jean, left to herself, took up the discarded wax, tried vainly to coax back the vanished camel, and then amused herself with a conception of her own. So absorbed did she become that MacGregor finished his experiments unheeded, and, receiving no answer to a question, still unregarded came and peered over her shoulder.
"Great Jupiter Pluvius!" he exclaimed.
Jean whirled about.
"How you startled me!" she said.
"It's nothing to the way you've startled me. Where did you see that head you've modeled?"
"Oh, this?" She tried to put the wax away. "It's nothing—only a baby in our block."
MacGregor pounced upon the model and bore it to the light.
"Nothing! Merely a study from life, that's all! Just a trifle thrown off in your odd moments!" He turned the little head round and round, showering exclamations. "Who taught you?" he demanded, striding back. "Somebody had a finger in it besides you. There are lines here that can't be purely intuitive."
"I used to watch my father."
"Was he a sculptor?"