"What's up, eh?" says Cobden, grimly. "That's a great picture, by heaven!" he cried. "That's what's up."
Skipper Tom laughed.
"She isn't so bad, is she?" he admitted, with interest. "She sort o' scares me by times. But she were meant t' do that. An' dang if I isn't fond of her, anyhow!"
"Show me another," says Cobden.
Skipper Tom sharply withdrew his interest from the picture.
"Isn't another," said he, curtly. "That was the last he done."
"Dead!" Cobden exclaimed, aghast.
"Dead?" the skipper marveled. "Sure, no. He've gone an' growed up." He was then bewildered by Cobden's relief.
Cobden faced the skipper squarely. He surveyed the genial fellow with curious interest.
"Skipper Tom," said he, then, slowly, "you have a wonderful son." He paused. "A—wonderful—son," he repeated. He smiled; the inscrutable wonder of the thing had all at once gently amused him—the wonder that a genius of rarely exampled quality should have entered the world in the neighborhood of Out-of-the-Way Tickle, there abandoned to chance discovery of the most precarious sort. And there was no doubt about the quality of the genius. The picture proclaimed it; and the picture was not promise, but a finished work, in itself an achievement, most marvelously accomplished, moreover, without the aid of any tradition.