I called a man and brought him to the house for Mrs. Forrester's directions. He soon returned with the rugs, which Vesty accepted for her baby as well as she could; Uncle Benny all the time singing gleefully. The party moved to go; in passing through the door Mrs. Forrester dropped her handkerchief. I picked it up and handed it to her. "Thank you, my poor fellow," she said; "you have the manners of a prince!" and put a coin in my hand--a piece of silver. I took the money. Vesty was still, after they were gone, her hands over her face. I knew well what thoughts she was thinking. "Do not go," she said to me, and her voice was like the low cry of her own child; "you are smiling still." She looked at me with strained eyes. "Well, perhaps because I am glad Mrs. Garrison would not adopt you and take you away from the Basin; perhaps because I am glad no handsome rake will ever ogle you as our lisping young man did Mrs. Notely Garrison." "It meant nothing between them all," said Vesty, her hand over her eyes; "you know that better than I. It is only the way they do." "It meant nothing! It is only the way they do." I put away the violin Notely's fingers had so lately touched. The tears stole down Vesty's cheeks and trembled on her lips. "He does not care," she said; "that is the worst! He does not care as he did once." "For what, Vesty?" "For anything but having a good time and making fun with people, and all that. He used to talk with me--oh, so high and noble, about things!" Her eyes flashed, then darkened again with pain. "Ay, I know he has seen the model and been pierced with it. He can never forget; he will come back." "The model?" "You know once there was a Master who was determined all his people should paint him a picture after a great model he had set before them. It seemed not to be an attractive model; it seemed full of pain and loss; the world looked to be full of other designs more desirable. "So that there were hardly any but that wandered from it, to paint pictures of their own; there was hardly, if ever, a great or a true and patient artist--for they are the same thing. "Some found the colors at hand so brilliant, and were so possessed with the beauty of dreams of their own, that they spent long years in painting for themselves splendid houses in bewitching landscapes, red passion roses, and heaps of glittering gold, that looked like treasures, but were nothing. "Some painted dark, sad glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on.