It was to Mrs. Burnham that she talked most freely, though Mrs. Roberts's young people were sympathetic, and Erskine, especially, liked nothing better than to hear long stories about the artist and his method of dealing with a picture.
"He made them up," Maybelle would say, "composed them, you know, or made a plot, as you do when you write a story for your college paper. The picture grew, just as a story does. 'That's an idea!' papa would say, when I was sitting meekly enough beside him, telling him some story of my day. 'That's a look I never saw before, let me get it, Maysie'—that was one of his dear names for me, he had dozens of them—and he would seize palette and brush and work for a few minutes as hard as he could, then sit back and gaze at me and think, and I knew that a new picture was born and would have to be watched over and nourished and developed. It was very interesting."
"Yes, indeed! he painted me a hundred times and in a hundred different ways, but they did him no good; he never would try to sell them, nor even show them. They are all boxed up with our other things and stored; Aunt Mamie took charge of them. He told her they were never to be sold. I think it was because my mother's picture was always mixed in with them, and he could not bear to sell her. He used to make pictures of me, sometimes, that he said were like mamma. There would be just little hints of me about them, not a likeness of me at all, but a beautiful girl, and the tears would come into papa's dear eyes when he looked at her, and he would say softly, 'It is her image.'"
When Maybelle talked in this way to Ruth, she once or twice said wistfully:—
"It must be beautiful to be loved in the way that my father loved my mother." But Erskine Roberts never heard any words of this kind.
CHAPTER XXIII
PUZZLING QUESTIONS
"This is lovely!" said Maybelle, as she drew the curtains, and pushed her sewing chair closer to Mrs. Burnham's. "Isn't it nice to be alone together? Erskine wanted me to go with them to the rehearsal and act as prompter, but I told him I was going to follow the promptings of my own heart and stay with you, especially since his mother must also be away. If we lived all alone in a dear little home, you and I, I could take care of you all the time."