"Charming," murmured Canon Prynne, "perfectly charming. Now, my dear
Cedersholm, there's your fellow for the Central Park pedestal."

CHAPTER XIV

The month was nearly at its end, and his money with it. Some time since,
he had given up riding in the cars, and walked everywhere. This exercise
was the one thing that tired him, because of his unequal stride.
Nevertheless, he strode, and though it seemed impossible that a chap
like himself could come to want, he finally reached his last "picayune,"
and at the same time owed the week's board and washing. The excitement
of his new life thus far had stimulated him, but the time came when this
stimulus was dead, and as he went up the steps of his uncle's house to
be greeted on the stoop by a beggar woman, huddling by her basket under
her old shawl, the sculptor looked sadly down at her greasy palm which
she hopefully extended. Then, with a brilliant smile, he exclaimed--

"I wonder, old lady, _just_ how poor you are?"

"Wurra," replied the woman, "if the wurrld was for sale for a cint, I
couldn't buy it."

Beneath his breath he murmured, "Nor could I," and thought of his watch.
Curiously enough, it had not occurred to him that he might pawn his
father's watch.

He now looked forward with pleasure to the tri-weekly drawing lessons,
for the friendly fires of his little cousins' hearts warmed his own. But
on this afternoon they failed to meet him in the hall or to cry to him
over the stairs or rush upon him like catapults from unexpected corners.
As he went through the silent house its unusual quiet struck him
forcibly, and he thought: "_What_ a tomb it would be without the
children!"

No one responded to his "Hello you," and at the entrance of the common
play and study room Fairfax paused, to see Bella and Gardiner in their
play aprons, their backs to the door, motionless before the table, one
dark head and one light one bent over an object apparently demanding
tender, reverent care.

At Fairfax's "Hello _you_ all!" they turned, and the big cousin never
forgot it as long as he lived--never forgot the Bella that turned, that
called out in what the French call "a torn voice"--_une voix dechiree_.
Afterwards it struck him that she called him "Antony" _tout court_, like
a grown person as she rushed to him. He never forgot how the little
thing flung herself at him, threw herself against his breast. For an
answer to her appeal with a quick comprehension of grief, A