Abner made a good deal of time for the Burrow, but it was long before he brought himself to make any for Eudoxia Pence. He came to see a great deal of the Bunnies; in a month or two he quite had the run of the place. There were friendly fellows who heaved big lumps of clay upon huge nail-studded scantlings, and nice little girls who designed book-plates, and more mature ones who painted miniatures, and many earnest, earnest persons of both sexes who were hurrying, hurrying ahead on their wet canvases so that the next exhibition might not be incomplete by reason of lacking a "Smith," a "Jones," a "Robinson." Abner gave each and every one of these pleasant people his company and imparted to them his views on the great principles that underlie all the arts in common. "So that's what you call it--a marquise," Abner observed on a certain occasion to one of the miniature painters. "This creature with a fluffy white wig and a low-necked dress is a marquise, is she? Do you like that sort of thing?" "Why, yes,--rather," said the artist. "Well,_I_ don't," declared Abner, returning the trifle to the girl's hands. "I'll paint my next sitter as a milkmaid--if she'll let me." "_As_ a milkmaid? No; paint the milkmaid herself. Deal with the verities. Like them before you paint them. Paint them _because_ you like them." "I don't know whether I should like milkmaids or not. I've never seen one." "They don't exist," chimed in Adrian Bond, who was dawdling in the background. "The milkmaids are all men. And as for the dairy-farms themselves----!" He sank back among his cushions. "I visited one in the suburbs last month--the same time when I was going round among the markets. I have been of half a mind, lately," he said, more directly to Abner, "to do a large, serious thing based on local actualities; _The City's Maw_--something like that. My things so far, I know (none better) _are_ slight, flimsy, exotic, factitious. The first-hand study of actuality, thought I----But no, no, no! It was a place fit only for a reporter in search of a--of a--I don't know what. I shall never drink coffee again; while as for milk punch----" "And what is the artist," asked Abner, "but the reporter sublimated? Why must the artist go afield to dabble in far-fetched artificialities that have nothing to do with his own proper time and place? Our people go abroad for study, instead of staying at home and guarding their native quality. They return affected, lackadaisical, self-conscious--they bring the hothouse with them. Why, I have seen such a simple matter as the pouring of a cup of tea turned into----" "You can't mean Medora Giles," said the miniaturist quickly, pausing amidst the laces of her bodice. "Don't make any mistake about Medora. When she goes in for all that sort of thing, she's merely 'creating atmosphere,' as we say,--she's simply after the 'envelopment,' in fact." "She is just getting into tone," Bond re-enforced, "with the candle-shades and the peppermints."