Bartlett, turning toward him incredulously.—"Do you mean to say that The First Grey Hair is liked?"
Cummings.—"I do. There hasn't been any picture so much talked of this season."
Bartlett.—"Then it's the shameless slop of the name. I should think you'd blush for your part in that swindle. But clergymen have no conscience, where they've a chance to do a fellow a kindness, I've observed." He goes up to Cummings with his brush in his mouth, his palette on one hand, and his mahl-stick in the other, and contrives to lay hold of his shoulders with a few disengaged fingers. As Cummings shrinks a little from his embrace: "Oh, don't be afraid; I shan't get any paint on you. You need a whole coat of whitewash, though, you unscrupulous saint!" He returns to his easel. "So The Old Girl—that's what I shall call the picture—is a success, is she? The admiring public ought to see the original elm-tree now; she hasn't got a hair, grey or green, on her head; she's perfectly bald. I say, Cummings, how would it do for me to paint a pendant, The Last Grey Hair? I might look up a leaf or two on the elm, somewhere: stick it on to the point of twig; they wouldn't know any better."
Cummings.—"The leafless elm would make a good picture, whatever you called it." Bartlett throws back his shaggy head and laughs up at the ceiling. "The fact is, Bartlett, I've got a little surprise for you."
Bartlett, looking at him askance.—"Somebody wanting to chromo The Old Girl? No, no; it isn't quite so bad as that!"
Cummings, in a burst.—"They did want to chromo it. But it's sold. They've got you two hundred dollars for it." Bartlett lays down his brush, palette, and mahl-stick, dusts his fingers, puts them in his pockets, and comes and stands before Cummings, on whom, seated, he bends a curious look.
Bartlett.—"And do you mean to tell me, you hardened atheist, that you don't believe in the doctrine of future punishments? What are they going to do with you in the next world? And that picture-dealer? And me? Two hun— It's an outrage! It's—the picture wasn't worth fifty, by a stretch of the most charitable imagination! Two hundred, d— Why, Cummings, I'll paint no end of Old Girls, First and Last Grey Hairs—I'll flood the market! Two— Good Lord!" Bartlett goes back to his easel, and silently resumes his work. After a while: "Who's been offered up?"
Cummings.—"What?"
Bartlett.—"Who's the victim? My patron? The noble and discriminating and munificent purchaser of The Old Girl?"
Cummings.—"Oh! Mrs. Bellingham. She's going to send it out to her daughter in Omaha."