A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Second

her daughter in an upper room at the back of her house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light she was sewing, and the girl was drawing at the same

ight the furnace, unless we wanted to scare everybody away with a cold house; an

" said the girl. "Perhaps they might like a cold one. But it's too

s they've had a sp

don't have sprinklings of snow there. I'm awfu

xperience opposes to the hopeful recklessness of such talk a

e girl, "and I should go in for lig

to Florida?" demanded

lue, mamma?" The girl was all the time sketching away, rubbing out, lifting her head

t I cannot endure this-t

t harm do

echoed t

r despair dusted off and ready for use at an instant's notice ever since we came, and wh

if it had not been for the ballast of her instinctive despondency he would have made shipwreck of such small chances of prosperity as befell him in life. It was not from him that his daughter got her talent, though he had left her his temperament intact of his widow's legal thirds. He was one of those men of whom the country people say when he is gone that the woman g

sure she needed instruction. On the other hand, they were not so radical as to agree with the old painter who came every summer to paint the elms of the St. Barnaby meadows. He contended that she needed to be a man in order to amount to anything; but in this theory he was opposed by an authority, of his own sex, whom the lady sketchers believed to speak with more impartiality in a matter concerning them as much as Alma Leighton. He said that instruction would do, and he was not only younger and handsomer, but he was fresher from the schools than old Harrington, who, even the lady sketchers could see, painted in an obsolescent manner. His name was Beaton-Angus Beaton; but he was not Scotch, or not more Scotch than Mary Queen of Scots was. His father was a Scotchman, but Beaton was born in Syracuse, New York, and it had taken only three years in Paris to obliterate many traces

, or get into some painter's private class; and it was the sense of duty thus appealed to which finally resulted in the hazardous experiment she and her mother were now making. There were no logical breaks in the chain of their reasoning from past

mes felt almost invited failure, if it did not deserve it. She was one of those people who believe that if

my despair, as you call

here we should

rhaps you've used too much of it." The girl laughed, and Mrs. Leighton laughed, too. Like every one else, she was not merely a prevailing mood, as people are apt to be in books, but was an irregularly spheroidal character, with surfaces that caught the different lights of circu

her sewing to look at it. "You'v

presenting a truly manly appearance. As long as I have one of the miserable objects before me, I can draw him; but as soon as his back's turned I get to putting ladies into men's clothes. I should thin

hton. "Really, Alma, for a refined

said Alma, slightly knocking her mother

thing to her. Wh

ng made love

erfectly

some more; and you'd say, 'She is, rather,' and that would give him courage, and he'd say, 'I don't mean that she's so very-' 'Of course not.' 'You understand?' 'Perfectly. I see it myself, now.' 'Well, then'--and he'd take your pencil and begin to draw-'I should give her a little more-Ah?' 'Yes, I see the difference.'-'You see the difference?' And he'd go off to some one else, and you'd know that you'd been doing the wishy-wa

tch and pinned i

n been about, yet?

l turned; and she added, "I believe he'

e strange he

more conventional than most of them; but even he can't keep it up. That's what makes me really think that women can never amount to anything in art. They keep

new

illiams's model for his Biblical-pieces; but since he's dead, the old man hardly gets anything to do. Mr. Wetmore says there isn't anybody in the Bible that Williams

sts work, or some of the most sacred pictures

knows he's anxious about is the drawing and the color. But people will never understand how simple artists are. When I reflect

aton is very simple?

st. He thinks he talks too well. They believe that i

t do you

express m

is evasion. After a while she said, "I pr

us as a model? I declare it makes me sick. And we shall keep him a week, and pay him six or seven dollars for the use of his grand old head, and then what will he do? The last time he was regularly employed was w

his pension," sa

nts-"says he has no pension. He didn't apply for it for a long time, and then

on, with some curiosity about the

expects to happen when she's done it. I suppose every one thinks she has genius. I know the Nebraska widow does, for she says that unless you have genius it isn't the least use. Everybody's p

dered back to another po

presume he doesn't r

aint. But I know he thinks so. H

t of breaking off, "what do you suppose

ave been natural for another person to come, and

. He was very nice at St. Barnaby, and

ouldn't contain her joy when she heard we were coming to New York

onable, and she's taken up with her own

sn't quite a tombst

ear. He can't be ashamed of us. Pe

ard, mamma?" The girl flushed a

ma," returne

hen," sa

she was one of those women (they are commoner than the same sort of men) whom it does not pain to take out their most intimat

mamma?" dema

nced us a great

ared to presume to

se for you to pretend that we didn't count upon him in-in every way. You may not have noticed his attentions

ied Alma, in

m about you, and it's a shame that he hasn't been near us. I should have thought comm

-nothing! He paid his b

e home, and all that; and I must say that after his attentions to you,

the pull of the bell-wire had twitched her to her feet, Mrs. Leigh

ive minutes after nine. Then they abandoned themselves so