“Waal, I reckon I’ll take the vase, if it’s agreeable to you, and make her holding it out, and put some seaweed and shells and sich onto her head, and let her hair fly loose, as if the wind blew it back. She won’t want no shoes nor sandals, nor nothing of that sort. What would be the use to a critter that passes its life swimming round the sea?”
“I see you understand. You’ll make her a beauty, Job?”
“I’ll do my best. You’ll want her to be a light-complected young woman, I guess.”
“They say the Nereides had green hair, but Virgil says Arethusa’s was golden, so we may make our nymph’s that color,” said Master Torrey, turning away to the window.
“Jes’ so; I’ll go right to work. I must get Lucy Peabody to put on a white gown and come and let me look at her a little. She’ll do it. She’s a real accommodating girl, is Lucy.”
“But Lucy is not fair.”
“No more she ain’t. Not white as milk, like Anna Jane Shuttleworth, but she’s a nice, pretty girl, and will be willing to oblige me. I’d never dare ask such a thing of old Colonel Shuttleworth’s daughter.”
Master Torrey smiled to himself as he thought of the silent, stately Anna standing as a model in the rude shop.
“But I’ll give the figure a look like Anna Jane, if I can,” pursued Job. “To my mind, she’s a great deal more like some such thing than she is like a real flesh-and-blood woman.”
To this Master Torrey made no answer, but smiled at the old man’s folly, and passed into the street without even asking what would be the price of the wooden sea-nymph.