“That’s nothing. You are ignorant by so much, that’s all, and Mrs.
John McCandless Blair is a liberal education--a post-graduate course,
in fact. It would be impossible for Miss Morley to negotiate with you
without her. And I myself have taken the deepest interest in the girl
from the beginning. The prettiest girl in Pennsylvania--and I am not
ignorant of the processions of beauty you can see in Philadelphia on
Saturdays at high noon, if you have an excuse for being in Chestnut
Street as the divinities seek lobster and ice cream at Vertini’s.”
Mrs. Blair wept--it was her way--when Jean’s drawings were displayed
in her library; those sketches did have heart in them! The editor
of the _Hemisphere_ was less emotional, but his praise of Jean’s
work was ample. He explained the character and scope of the text to
be illustrated. Jean would have to visit the South and West to find
the types needed, and it would be necessary to begin at once. After
dinner the editor and Jean discussed details, with proof sheets of the
articles before them. They were bound to make an impression; they were
the work of specialists, and comprised a careful economic and social
study of child labour and were to be embodied in a book following their
use in the periodical; the commission was important to the artist and
all concerned. The editor had prepared a schedule of the drawings
he thought most desirable, with a memorandum of the times at which
they must be delivered. The amount named for the work was generous;
Wingfield, graceful liar that he could be, had helped here, and after
Jean had taken counsel of Mrs. Blair in a corner, a contract was
signed--Jean’s hand a little wobbly for one who could draw so well.
Mrs. Blair’s instructions that no one should be admitted that evening
were conclusive enough as against the world in general; but her door
was never shut in her brother’s face. Wayne, having missed Walsh,
had dined alone at the Club and afterward sought Wingfield vainly by
telephone. He was restless and unhappy and set out for his sister’s
merely to have something to do. That he and Jean should be in the
same town and not see each other struck him as the bitterest irony.
He missed the peace of the mountains and the daily discipline of his
wood-chopping.
It was in this humour that he came upon the animated scene at his
sister’s that had Jean for its central figure--a new Jean, with the
happiness of renewed youth bright in her countenance. She had seen him
before he made her out from the doorway, and she prepared herself for
the meeting while he was making the editor’s acquaintance. She had
wondered all these long days since she had watched him from the window
of the boarding-house parlour how it would be if they ever met again;
but she had not expected anything like this. The most her imagination
had conjured had been a chance meeting in the street.
Wayne was taken into the great secret by Mrs. Blair and ran his eyes
over the drawings before he spoke to Jean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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