Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-23

the base of the neck to hide bad modelling"
The red-haired girl laughed a little.
You want to do landscapes with
cattle knee-deep in grass to hide
bad drawing. You want to do q
great deal more than you can do. You
have sense of color, but you want form.
Color's gift-put it aside and think no more
about it-but form you can be drilled into.
Now, all your fancy heads-and some of
them are very goodwill keep you exactly
where you are. With line you must go
forward or backward, and it will show up
all your weaknesses"
"But other people" began Maisie.
"You mustn't mind what other people do.
If their souls were your soul, it would be
different You stand and fall by your own
work, remember, and it's waste of time to
think of anyone else in this battle"
Dick paused, and the longing that had
been so resolutely put away came back into
his eyes. He looked at Maisie, and the
look asked as plainly as words, was it not
time to leave all this barren wilderness of
canvas and counsel, and join hands with
Life and Love?
Maisie assented to the new programme of
schooling so adorably that Dick could
hardly restrain himself from picking her
w ehSh ohu tucIc auu On
the nearest registrars Office. It was the i'm
plicit obedience to the spoken word and the
blank Indifference to the unspoken desire
that baft1ed and bufeted his soul He held
authority in that thouse,-authority limited,
indeed, to one-half of one afternoon in seven,
but very real while it lasted. Maisie had
learned to appeal to him on many subjects,
from the proper packing of pictures to the
condition of a smoky chimney. The red
haired girl never consulted him about any,
thing. On the other hand, she accepted his
appearances without protest, and watched
him always. He discovered that the meals
of the establishment were irregular and
fragmentary. They depended chiefly on tea,
pickles and biscuit, as he had suspected from
the beginning. The girls were supposed to
market week and week about, but they
lived, with the help of charwoman, as
casually as the young ravens. Maisie spent
most of her income on models, and the
other girl revelled in apparatus as refined
as her work was rough. Armed with know
ledge dear-bought from the Docks, Dick
warned Maisle that the end of semi-starva-
tion meant the crlppling of power to work,
which was considerably worse than death.
Maise took the warning, and gave more
thought to what she ate and drank. When
his trouble returned upon him, as it gener-
ally did in the long winter twilights, the
remembrance of that little act of domestic
authority and his coercion with a hearth
brush of the smoky drawing-room chimney
stung Dick like whip-lash.
He conceived that this memory would be
the extreme of his sufferings till, one Sun
day, the red-haired girl announced that she
would make a study of Dicks head, and
that he would be good enough to sit still,
and-quite as an afterthought-look at
Maisie. He sat, because he could not we'll
refuse, and for the space of half an hour he
reflected on all the people in the past whom
he had laid open for the purposes of his own
craft He remembered Binat most distinct
ly-that Binat who had once been an artist
and talked about degradation.
It was the merest monochrome roughing
iu of head, but it presented the dumb
waiting, the longing, and above all the
hopeless enslavement Of the man, in a spirit
Of bitter mockery.
"I'll buy it." said Dick, promptly, sat
your own price,"
my prlce is too high, but 1 daresay
you'll be as grateful if" The wet
sketch fluttered from the girls hand and
fell into the ashes of the studio stove.
When she picked it up it was hopelessly
smudged.
"Oh, it'sall spoiled |" said Maisie. "And
never saw it. Was it like?"
'Thank you" said Dick under his breath
to the red-haired girl. And he removed
himself swiftly.
"How that man hates mel" said the girl.
"And how he loves you, Maisiep'
"What nonsensel I know Dicks very
fond of me, but he has his work to do, and
have mine"
"Yes, he is fond of you, and think he
knows there is something in impressionism,
after all. Maisie, can't you see?"
"See? See what?"
Nothing; only, I know that if I could
get any man to look at me as that man looks
at you, I'd don't know what I'd do. But
he hates ME. Oh, how he hates mel'
She was not altogether correct. Dicks
hatred was tempered with gratitude for q
few moments, and then he forgot the girl
entirely. Only the sense of shame re-
mained, and he was nursing it across the
park in the fog. '.There'H be an explosion
one of these days" be said, wrathfully.
"But it isn't Maisie's. fault; she's right,
quite right, as far as she knows, and can't
blame her. This business has been going
on for three months, nearly. Three monthsl
and it cost me ten years knocking about
to get at the notion, the merest raw notion,
of my work. That's true; but then didn't
have pins, drawing-pins and palette-knives,
stuck into me every Sunday. Oh, my little
darling, if ever I break you, somebody will
have a very bad time of it. No, she won't.
I'd be as big fool about her as am now.
I'll poison that red-haired girl on my we'd
ding-day-she's unwholesome-and now I'll
pass on these present bad times to Torp."
Ito be continued neat Sunday)