cere
artist. She had her studio, her canvases, she wrote plays and songs, and
nothing, with the exception perhaps of realities, for she knew nothing
of them, nothing made less impression on her than did her only child,
until one day she suddenly remembered Antony when it was too late.

He was like his mother, but she was unconscious of the fact. She only
knew him as a rowdy boy, fond of sports, an alarmingly rough fighter,
the chief in the neighbourhood scuffles, a vigorous, out-of-door boy, at
the head of a yelling, wild little band that made her nerves quiver.
Coloured servants and his Mammy soothed Antony's ills and washed his
bruises. With a feeling of shame he thrust aside his artistic
inclinations, lest his comrades should call him a milksop, but he drew
copiously in secret, when he was kept in at school or housed with a
cold. And from the distance at which she kept him, Antony worshipped his
mother. He admired her hauteur, the proud cold loveliness. His sunny
nature, incapable of morose or morbid brooding, felt no neglect. Late in
spring they too had gone north to a water cure popular with Louisiana
people, where a more vigorous growth of trees magnetized Antony, who
climbed like a squirrel and tore his clothes to his heart's content. He
had come in from a tramp and, scandalized by his rough and tumbled
appearance as she caught a glimpse of him swinging along, Mrs. Fairfax
summoned her little son. Rocking idly on the verandah she watched him
obey her call, and there was so much buoyant life in his running step,
such a boy's grace and brightness about him that he charmed her
beauty-loving eyes.

"Go, wash your face and hands and bring your school books here. I do
hope you have brought your books with you."

When he reappeared with the volumes of dog-eared school books, she
fingered them gingerly, fell on his drawing portfolio and opened it.

"Who drew these for you, Tony?"

"Mother, no one. I did them. They are rotten."

Mrs. Fairfax exclaimed with excitement: "Why, they are quite
extraordinary! You must study with some one."

Blushing, enraptured, Antony was tongue-tied, although a host of things
rushed to his lips that now he might be permitted to speak to her he
longed to tell everything that was on his heart.

Neither of them forgot that day. The wistaria was purple in the vines,
and his mother, a shawl with trailing fringe over her shoulders, rocked
indolent and charming in her chair. She had made he