"I should say not," he declared very positively. "That sort of thing is no child's work. That's what painters do when they're recording an impression, and I've often looked in more wonder at such sketchy outlines than at the finished product. To know how to get that impression on paper so that it's unmistakable--I tell you that's training and nothing else. I don't know enough about it to say it's genius, too, yet I've had an artist friend tell me it cost him more to learn to take the right sort of notes than to enlarge upon those notes afterward." When he wrote to Anne next morning--he was not venturing to ask more of her than one exchange a day--he told her what he thought about those sketches: I've had that sheet pinned up at the foot of my bed ever since it came, and I'm not yet tired of looking at it. You should have seen Franz's face when I showed it to him. "Ze arteeste!" he exclaimed, and laughed, and made eloquent gestures, by means of which I judged he was trying to express you. He looked as if he were trying to impress me with his own hair, his eyes, his cheeks, his hands; but I knew well enough he meant you. I gathered that he had been not ill pleased with his visit to you, for he proposes another; in fact, I think he would enjoy playing for you every day if you should care to hear him so often. He does not much like to perform in the wards, though he does it whenever I suggest it. He has discovered that though they listen respectfully while he plays his own beloved music, mostly they are happier when he gives them a bit of American ragtime, or a popular song hit. His distaste for that sort of thing is very funny. One would think he had desecrated his beloved violin when he condescends to it, for afterward he invariably gives it a special polishing with the old silk handkerchief he keeps in the case--and Miss Arden vows he washes his hands, too. Poor Franz! Your real artist has a hard time of it in this prosaic world doesn't he? The note ended by saying boldly that King would like another sketch sometime, and he even ventured to suggest that he would enjoy seeing a picture of that row of white lilac trees at the edge of the garden where Anne used to play. It was two days before he got this, and meanwhile a box of water colours had come into requisition. When the sheet of heavy paper came to King he lay looking at it with eyes which sparkled.