"Jean Marie Stine - Future Eves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stine Jean Marie)

hand interrupted her. The side window of the studio was open. The artist's gaze still
clung to his picture. "I couldn't have, Auntie, I couldn't have," he was saying in a
beseeching voice. "'I know I didn't. Oh my picture! and I've spent years to be able
to do just that. Who could have done so perfectly just what I've longed and longed
to do."
"Bertram, dear, listen," Minna entreated soothingly. "I saw you sitting here last night,
just as you often do, on that little stool, studying your picture and chewing on a
brush handle. See," she picked up a brush lying on the palette, "here's the very
brush. Look, Miss Wormersley, the paint on it is wet, too, and just matches." She
laughed tenderly in the artist's face, but he shook his head vaguely. The girl put her
arms impulsively around him and drew him down beside her on the sofa.
Miss Wormersley turned from the open window to the wet canvas. She firmly
believed her nephew had painted that wolf's head the night before, while she and
Minna had been sitting in the living-room, but she couldn't understand the open
window, and anything mysterious was distasteful to her. She mistrusted where she
could not understand. She watched Minna, rumpling her nephew's hair with loving
fingers while she called him a "dear old silly," and the aunt wished she could express
her sympathy more plainly. But her prim nature made such a demonstration
impossible. Minna would make him a good wife. It took an artist to understand an
artist.
Meanwhile Bertram sat quietly submitting to his betrothed's endearments, but his
aunt knew he was not satisfied with the explanation.
"You'd better brace up, Bertram," she said sharply, "and go to work. If you don't
finish this picture what will Mrs. Beekman-Smythe say after all the money she has
spent on your education?"
Minna jumped up and impulsively drew Miss Wormersley toward the big canvas.
"Isn't it splendid?" she exclaimed all aglow with enthusiasm. "Miss Wormersley, I've
painted nothing but animals for five years and I know just how wonderful this is. See
the cold calculation in that wolf's eye. He wants that old ram as badly as the rest do,
but he sees those two hunters leaving the woods, and he isn't going to take any
chances."
Miss Wormersley looked on with mild appreciation, but she couldn't summon such
real enthusiasm as Minna seemed to feel over the expression on an old wolf's face.
Instead she straightened the girl's collar and rearranged a comb, so that it did its duty
properly and held back the vagrant wisps that would curl around Minna's little pink
ears. Miss Wormersley was an orderly soul, and she loved neatness more than all the
animal pictures in the world.
"I guess you and Bert are well matched," she said, "if that was my piece of work I
couldn't sit there and moan. I'd keep working 'till it was done. I can't abide my work
staring me in the face unfinished."
She glanced toward her nephew to see if he responded to her suggestion, but it was
of no use. The artist merely shook his head despondently. "It isn't mine," he said
lifelessly. "I can't exhibit what isn't mine."


II.


The following morning Miss Wormersley and Minna stood before Bert's big canvas.
Amazement kept both silent for they knew the artist had not touched a brush to the