“Why, Jimmie, that's a cow!”
And sure enough, horned and uddered, and with casual tail, a cow was wandering over the ocean, mildly speculating on the lighthouse. Then Jimmie would roar with laughter, and he would tether the cow to a buoy and put in a milkmaid in a boat coming to milk the cow, and at Aline's breathless suggestion, a robber with a bow and arrow shooting the unnatural animal from the lighthouse top. Thus he would waste an hour elaborating the absurdity, finishing it off beautifully so that it should be worthy of a place on Aline's bedroom wall.
The months and years passed, and Jimmie found himself, if not on the highroad to fortune, at least relieved of the necessity of frequenting the murky byways aforesaid. He even acquired a little reputation as a portrait painter, much to his conscientious, but comical despair. “I am taking people's money under false pretences,” he would say. “I am an imaginative painter. I can't do portraits. Your real portrait painter can jerk the very soul out of a man and splash it on to his face. I can't. Why do they come to me to be photographed, when Brown, Jones, or Robinson would give them a portrait? Why can't they buy my subject-pictures which are good? In taking their money I am a mercenary, unscrupulous villain!” Indeed, if Aline had not been there to keep him within the bounds of sanity, his Quixotism might have led him to send his clients to Brown or Jones, where they could get better value for their money. But Aline was there, rising gradually from the little child into girlhood, and growing in grace day by day. After all, the charwoman seemed to be right. The tender plant, left to itself, thrived, shot up apparently of its own accord, much to Jimmie's mystification. It never occurred to him that he was the all in all of her training—her mother, father, nurse, teacher, counsellor, example. Everything she was susceptible of being taught by a human being, he taught her—from the common rudiments when she was a little child to the deeper things of literature and history when she was a ripening maiden. Her life was bound up with his. Her mind took the prevailing colour of his mind as inevitably as the grasshopper takes the green of grass or the locust the grey-brown of the sand. But Jimmie in his simple way regarded the girl's sweet development as a miracle of spontaneous growth.
Yet Aline on her part instinctively appreciated the child in Jimmie, and from very early years assumed a quaint attitude of protection in common every-day matters. From the age of twelve she knew the exact state of his financial affairs, and gravely deliberated with him over items of special expenditure; and when she was fourteen she profited by a change in housekeepers to take upon herself the charge of the household. Her unlimited knowledge of domestic science was another thing that astounded Jimmie, who to the end of his days would have cheerfully given two shillings a pound for potatoes. And thus, while adoring Jimmie and conscious that she owed him the quickening of the soul within her, she became undisputed mistress of her small material domain, and regarded him as a kind of godlike baby.
At last there came a memorable day. According to a custom five or six years old, Jimmie and Aline were to spend New Year's Eve with some friends, the Frewen-Smiths.
He was a rising architect who had lately won two or three important competitions and had gradually been extending his scale of living. The New Year's Eve party was to be a much more elaborate affair than usual. Aline had received a beautifully printed card of invitation, with “Dancing” in the corner. She looked through her slender wardrobe. Not a frock could she find equal to such a festival. And as she gazed wistfully at the simple child's finery laid out upon her bed, a desire that had dawned vaguely some time before and had week by week broadened into craving, burst into the full blaze of a necessity. She sat down on her bed and puckered her young brows, considering the matter in all its aspects. Then, with her sex's guilelessness, she went down to the studio, where Jimmie was painting, and put her arms round his neck. Did he think she could get a new frock for Mrs. Frewen-Smith's party?
“My dear child,” said Jimmie in astonishment, “what an idiotic question!”
“But I want really a nice one,” said Aline, coaxingly.
“Then get one, dear,” said Jimmie, swinging round on his stool, so as to look at her.
“But I'd like you to give me this one as a present. I don't want it to be like the others that I help myself to and you know nothing about—although they all are presents, if it comes to that—I want you to give me this one specially.”