The boy, used to these fits of absorption in his two artist patronesses, sat down for a little and let his eyes wander round the studio, looking at the pictures and nicknacks. Then he got up to make a closer examination of vases and photographs, and walked about on tiptoe, trying to still the noise of his iron-shod boots against the hard, polished floor. At last he discovered on the bookshelves an illustrated History of England, with which he retired to his favourite place on the hearthrug. And so they remained for half an hour without saying a word--Clytie bending over her study, Jack curled up with his picture-book. It was quite still. A stray bumble-bee looked in now and then at the window, buzzing querulously, as if he had lost his way in London, and then darted off again. From the servants' hall came the just perceptible voice of one of the maids singing a hymn-tune, and from far, far away came the tinkling treble of a piano-organ. And these few sounds, so faint yet so clear, accentuated the summer stillness. When Clytie had put the last few touches on the portion of her work that demanded all her concentration, she gave a little sigh of relief. “What do you think of that, Jack?” she said, leaning back with her head critically aslant. “Don't you think that is going to make a famous picture?” Jack jumped up promptly, leaving his book open on the hearthrug, and came up to her side. He was not a connoisseur, in spite of his associations with art, so he said nothing, but grinned appreciatively, rubbing the calf of one leg with the instep of the other. “Well,” asked Clytie, “why don't you admire?” “You aint given them no faces,” said Jack. “Ah! This is to be one face,” she said, pointing to a kind of _remarque_ at the foot of the sheet. “Or something like it. Now just use your imagination, Jack. This face is to go there--the woman whose whole nature has been awakened, and is shining out of her eyes, and quivering on her lips, and is vibrating all through her frame--all of which is Greek and Chaldee to you, my good Jack; but I may as well explain. And now I have got to fix a face for this one. What kind of face do you think I am going to give her?” “I dunno,” murmured Jack. And then after a slight pause: “And what's the man going to be like?” “Ah!” said Clytie with a mock sigh. “What a little Philistine you are! The man can be any kind of creature on two legs. What does it matter about the man? He is a nuisance. I have a good mind to make him awfully ugly with a face like a rhinoceros. See, like this.” She made a few rapid strokes with her charcoal in the oval left for the man's face, and the result was a picturesque monster with a long nose, Mephistophelian eyebrows, and a moustache curling up to his ears. Then they both burst out laughing. “Let me draw some funny men for you,” she said in the light-hearted buoyancy of her mood. “Run and get me that sheet of paper over there.”