"Oh, I only meant the coloring," interrupted Gregg, his cheeks flushing. "It's wonderfully lovely." "And you don't have spring blossoms North?" asked Mrs. Colton. Her own eyes had been drinking in the charm of his personality; no color-schemes or palette-tones were interesting her. The straight, lithe, figure, square shoulders, open, honest face, sunny brown eyes, with the short, crisp hair that curled about the temples, meant something alive and young: something that could laugh when she laughed and be merry over little things. "Yes, of course, but not this glorious rose-pink," the young painter burst out enthusiastically. "If it will only last until I finish your portrait! It's really your month to be painted in, Mrs. Colton. You have all of Sully's harmonies in your coloring--pink, white, blue"--he was still looking into her eyes--"The great Thomas should have seen you first, I am only his humble disciple," and he shrugged his square shoulders in a modest way. "And what about Phil?" she laughed, catching the fire of his enthusiasm as she drew the boy closer to her side. "Well, I should try him in October. He has"--and he glanced at the Judge--"his father's brown eyes and dark skin. Nuts and autumn leaves and red berries go best with that," he added, as he ran his fingers through the boy's short curls. "And an old fellow like me, I suppose, you'd paint with a foot of snow on the ground," laughed the Judge dryly. "Well--anything to please Olivia. Come, all of you, dinner is waiting!" * * * * * The warmth of the greeting was as great a surprise to the young Northerner as the wealth of the out-of-door bloom. He had been hospitably received in similar journeys in his own State, but never quite like this. There it was a matter of business until he had become "better acquainted," even when he stayed in the houses of his patrons. He remembered one old farmer who wanted to put him in a room over the stable with the hired man, and another, a mill-owner, who deducted the sum of his board from the price of the picture, but here he had been treated as one of the family from the moment his foot touched their door-step. The Judge had not only placed him on his right hand at table, but had sent old Bundy, the family butler, down into the wine-cellar for a bottle of old Madeira, that had "rusted away in his cellar," he said, for thirty years, and which he would open in remembrance of his college days, when his guest's uncle was his chum and classmate.