Mordreth was sitting composedly before a half-finished portrait of an elderly man of rustic mien. About him were disposed a number of helps and accessories: a pair of old-fashioned gold spectacles, an envelope containing a lock of gray hair, two or three faded photographs, and a steel engraving extracted from the _Early Settlers of Illinois_. With these aids he was hoping to hit the taste and satisfy the memory of certain surviving grandchildren. Little O'Grady ignored the presence of any third person and let himself out. "He's a genius, Mark; he's full of the real stuff. He can draw to beat the band, and he's got ideas to burn--throws them out as a volcano does hot stones. And I expect he can paint too, from what little I saw--says he's just sold off all his best things. Yes, sir, he's an out-and-out genius and we've got to treat him right; we must let him in on this bank scheme of ours--that's all there is about it!" IX "Well, it comes to this, then," said Virgilia. "We must give them something definite--a fully outlined--_projet_; and we must give it to them as soon as possible." She cleared away the ruck of evening papers from the library table, sent her younger sister off with arithmetic and geography to the dining-room, extracted a few sheets of monogrammed paper from the silver stationery-rack close by, and turned on two or three more lights in the electrolier overhead. "Now, then. We'll choke off that foolish notion of theirs; we'll smother it before it has a chance to mature." She put a pen into Daffingdon's hand, with the open expectation of immediate results. She herself always thought better with a pen in her hand and a writing-pad under it; no doubt a painter would respond to the same stimulus. Daffingdon bit at the end of the penholder and made a dog-ear on the topmost of the steel-gray sheets. "Come," said Virgilia. "Whatever follies may have begun to churn in their poor weak noddles, we will _not_ draw upon the early pages of the local annals, we will not attempt to reconstruct the odious architecture of the primitive prairie town. Come; there are twelve large lunettes, you say?" "Yes." "Well, now, just how shall we handle them?" "I had thought of a general colour-scheme in umber and sienna; though Giles's idea of shading the six on the left into purple and olive and the six on the right into----" "Dear me! Can we hope to impress Andrew P. Hill with any such idea as that? No; we must have our theme, our subject--our series of subjects." "I don't want to be simply pictorial," said Daffingdon reluctantly; "and surely you can't expect me to let my work run into mere literature."