Chapter 6 - Page 2

decorative medallions for rich brewers' houses. You are
thoroughly good at that.' Dick was sick and savage.

'Better things than medallions, Dick,' was the answer, in tones that
recalled a gray-eyed atom's fearless speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick would
have abased himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.

Next Sunday he laid at Maisie's feet small gifts of pencils that could
almost draw of themselves and colours in whose permanence he believed,
and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded,
among other things, an exposition of the faith that was in him.

Torpenhow's hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency
with which Dick preached his own gospel of Art.

A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it was
Maisie's will and pleasure, and he dragged his words together to make
plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the
whys and wherefores of work. There is not the least difficulty in doing a
thing if you only know how to do it; the trouble is to explain your
method.

'I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand,' said Dick,
despairingly, over the modelling of a chin that Maisie complained would
not 'look flesh,'--it was the same chin that she had scraped out with the
palette knife,--'but I find it almost impossible to teach you. There's a
queer grin, Dutch touch about your painting that I like; but I've a notion
that you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you never used
the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with flesh in
shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it yourself, you shirk hard
work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line doesn't
allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy, tricky stuff
in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing off,--as I know. That's
immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and then I can tell more about
your powers, as old Kami used to say.'

Maisie protested; she did not care for the pure line.

'I know,' said Dick. 'You want to do your fancy heads with a bunch of
flowers at 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 a great deal more than you
can do. You have sense of colour, but you want form. Colour's a 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 good--will 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