to
sketch my baby! Every new attitude is prettier than the last, and every
day adds a charm. You need not laugh; I never had a baby before. Just
wait until you know for yourself! I've painted the darling twice, once
for Ronayne's father, though a little against the grain, for the old
gentleman thinks it dreadfully _infra dig._ that I, a lady born, and I
most especially a lady wed, should ever have been publicly catalogued
as an artist in exhibition lists and newspaper notices, and have sold
the labor of my hands, eyes, and brain in the marketplace. What would
happen if he caught sudden sight of a memento that always goes with me
in one of my boxes--a little tin sign, my first one; and how proud I
was of it!

FRAULEIN LILIAN MACFARLANE.

I don't like, for the family's sake, to imagine. When Ronayne gave him
the picture on his birthday, our joint offering, my work set in the
loveliest frame Ronayne could find, he couldn't help being pleased, and
he couldn't help knowing it was baby's very self; but if the picture
had been the work of a paid artist, I know he would have been
wonderfully soothed. The picture was on exhibition for some days in the
morning room, and being one day in the conservatory with Ronayne, I
heard his father expatiating upon the striking likeness that had been
happily caught, to a lady visitor. Presently I heard her read the
signature, "Lil. De Vere, del., 1873." "Why, it is your
daughter-in-law's work! How charming for a mother to be able to paint
such an admirable portrait of her child. That must double the picture's
value to you!"

And the _beau pere_ hemmed and hawed, and made the general inarticulate
noises of an Englishman embarrassed, or wishful to make an impressive
speech, and finally got out:

"Aw, yes, yes--of course! A nice and amateur talent has Mrs. De Vere."

"Nice amateur talent!" I was fit to fly at him, and only the
brutal--yes, the brutal--grasp of my husband kept me from rushing into
the room and proclaiming "Mrs. De Vere's" antecedents--her artistic
career sketched in a few bold touches.

The world would have ended then and there. But how delightful to have
seen, first, his looks of blank horror at the idea of a daughter-in-law
who had been used to rough it, and to make her little money go a
fabulously long way.

"This is the daughter of Prof. Macfarlane!" he introduces me proudly
sometimes. I wonder if he thinks a poor scientific man like papa could
send all his young