With smiling face and clasped hands, Madeline stood gazing at the likeness; then, as if moved by a sudden impulse, she threw her arms round White’s neck and kissed him, first on one cheek then on the other, while Forster looked on in amused sympathy.
‘You like it, my dear? It was—ahem!—a sort of a kind of an inspiration. It came upon me when I was looking at the play, and, by Jove, I had to do it.’
‘It is really capital,’ said Forster. ‘I should have recognised the likeness anywhere.’
‘Of course, it’s only a daub,’ returned White, humbly. ‘I might have painted decently if I had stuck to it, instead of dangling after Jew managers and doing potboilers for Eugene Aram. But you’re fresh from seeing Serena’s picture, and that gives my thing no chance.’
‘I don’t care for Mr. Serena’s picture,’ cried Madeline. ‘I do not like to tell him so, but I am sure I am not so lovely as he makes me, and I know my eyes are not green. I like your picture ever so much the best—and, oh! it was so kind of you to do it, Mr. White. It is just like me as I was—a nasty, little, pale thing, with shock hair!’
And she stood contemplating the likeness in an ecstasy of honest reminiscence.
‘My dear, you were never nasty,’ said White, good humouredly. ‘Shock haired, if you like, but charming as you are now.’
‘Always charming, I’m sure,’ suggested Forster, mildly ‘Do you know, I should like to buy this picture?’
White opened his eyes.
‘Take it, my dear fellow, it’s of no pecuniary value. Stop, though! I can make a composition of it by putting in some flowers and a bit of background, and calling it “Primroses—a Study,” or something of that sort.’