For in fact I was carrying a message to Miss Deborah Ware, a kinswoman of my mother’s, and I had met Pelleas only by some heavenly chance as he crossed the common.
“And who is Miss Deborah Ware?” asked Pelleas, doubtfully, as if weighing the matter of entering her garden.
“She owns a gold thimble,” I explained, “that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. She prefers wooden sabots to all other shoes. And she paints most beautiful pictures.”
“Ah,” said Pelleas, enlightened, “so that is who she is. And how does she look, pray?”
“I am certain that she looks like the Queen of Sheba,” I told him. “And, moreover, all her caps are crown-shaped.”
“Now I know how the Queen of Sheba looked,” cried Pelleas, triumphantly. “She looked like the crowns of Miss Deborah’s caps. Do you happen to know what the toll is to leave this lane?”
As I did not know—did anybody ever know?—and as we were even then at the end of the lane, my ignorance was rebuked and I paid the toll and I fancy repeated the lesson—it was a matter of honour to the sun and the wild roses not to let it be otherwise. And we crossed the West Meadow by the long way and at the last—at the very last, and nearly noon!—we reached the cottage where Miss Deborah Ware had come to spend the Summer and engage in the unmaidenly pursuit of painting pictures.
To tell the truth our Summer community of good Knickerbocker folk were inclined to question Miss Deborah’s good taste. Not that they objected to the paint, but the lack of virtue seemed to lie in the canvas. If Miss Deborah had painted candle-shades or china porringers or watered silk panels or flowerpots, no one, I think, would have murmured. But when they learned that she painted pictures they spread and lifted their fans.
“Miss Deborah Ware would ape the men,” they said sternly. And when they saw her studio apron made of ticking and having a bib they tried to remonstrate with my mother, her kinswoman.
“She is a great beauty, for her age,” said the women. “But Beauty is as Beauty does,” they reminded her.