omething,--I just must!"

"Well, I should think it would become you to say you are sorry and to
thank him," said Mr. Lloyd, smiling.

"But, papa, I want to take the pony-carriage and go after him, and ask
him to come back to the egg-rolling; and if Jimmy Barrows will go with
me--"

"I'd be delighted, Miss Elsie."

"He'd make it easier,--he'd know what to say, and Royal would know what
to say to him. The others will excuse us; we won't be long. Oh, may
I--may we, papa?"

"Well, as you seem to have settled everything, I don't see but I must--"

But Elsie did not wait to hear more. She knew she had not only her
father's consent, but his approval, and was off like a flash to order
the carriage.

If the Lloyds had been better acquainted in Lime Ridge, Royal's work
would not have been such a great surprise to them. A good many of the
Lime Ridge people could have told them of the boy's talent, and how it
had been discouraged by his family. There was no money now to support
and educate him in that direction, and it had been arranged with an old
friend who was in the wool business that the boy should go into his
employ as soon as he had graduated from the Lime Ridge High School. This
was considered a very lucky prospect for him, but Royal hated it. From
a little fellow he had shown a great love for pictures, and had covered
every scrap of paper he could find with crude drawings.

When he was eight years old, a visitor had given him a box of paints and
brushes. Two years later he had become acquainted with an artist who was
staying a few weeks at Lime Ridge, and went with him on his
sketching-tramps. With him he learned something about an artist's
methods, and received from him as a parting gift, various artist's
materials that he had made industrious use of.

The whim of painting the eggs and sending them to the sisters had come
to him as a sort of apology to them for his exhibition of temper, and he
had no idea that his name, so palpable to his artist eye, would escape
their observation as it did. He expected his gift and its motives to be
recognized at once. Instead, he was questioned as if he were nothing but
an ignorant errand-boy; and, bitterest of all, even when he had
confessed to a knowledge of the giver, the possibility of his being the
painter himself was not for a moment suspected. But while he stood
leaning over the farm-gate thinking these bitter thoughts, a stout
little pony was bringing him what he litt