But the artist seemed to have taken her at her word, and she did not think he could have heard her, as he sat complacently dabbling his brush in the little water-tin, now restored to its proper use, and then put it to his lips, and then touched his paper with it. There was no colour in the brush, and no particular effect upon the paper, so it seemed to the ignorant tyro at his side. In spite of her promise of silence, she could not resist pointing this out to him.
“Don’t be too sure,” he said; “every touch counts.”
“I do wish I might have a look at it!”
She was quite unprepared for the terrible frown that appeared on his mild countenance when she preferred this innocent-seeming request.
“You must excuse me, please. I cannot bear to show my things before they are done. I could never work at them again if I did. It is a peculiarity of mine—dreadful, but—here is Billy! I am afraid he will have spilt most of the milk by the time he gets here.”
“Mr. Rivers, sir,” said the boy, as soon as he got within earshot, “Farmer says as one o’ they little black pigs—you knows ’em, sir—?”
“Intimately, every one of them,” replied the artist, bitterly. “It’s your business to keep them off me, you young villain, and instead of that you go and let them rout about in my colour box——”
“That’s just it, sir,” Billy answered, grinning joyfully; “one of ’em has died suddent-like, and Farmer says as how it died along of eating those little sticky things o’ yourn that squeedge in and out.”
“One of my oil-colour tubes! What nonsense! Just go and tell Mr. Ward—no, stop; I’ll speak to him myself, later.” He turned and laughed at Mrs. Elles very pleasantly. “What an absurd thing! But I certainly have missed my Naples yellow, lately.”
She laughed too. “Now I have heard your name,” she said.