An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by pats of indigo and vermilion. So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the background against a mass of yellow light--black against yellow is always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zinober that illumined my own grassy sward. Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people; and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective, particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition. Then she caught sight of my umbrella. She came straight toward me with that slowing of pace as she approached the nearer, her curiosity getting the better of her timidity--quite as a fawn or a little calf would have done, attracted by some bit of color or movement which was new to it. The brown madder dress I now saw was dotted with little spots of red, like sprays of berries; the yellow-ochre hat was wound with a blue ribbon, and tied with a bow on one side. I could see, too, that she wore slippers, and that her hair was platted in two pig-tails, and hung down her back, the ends fastened with a ribbon that matched the one on her hat. She stood quite still, her face perfectly impassive, her little hands clasped together, the brim of her hat shading her eyes, which looked straight at my canvas. I gave no sign of her presence. It is dangerous to break down the reserve of silence, which is often the only barrier between an out-door painter and the crowds that surround him. Persisted in, it not only compels their respect, even to the lowering of their voices and the tip-toeing in and out of the circle about you, but shortens the time of their visits, a consummation devoutly to be wished. So I worked on in silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do Monvel's drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner of my eye. Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was thrust out, stopping within a hair's-breadth of the dot of Chinese white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure. "Très drôle, Monsieur!"