ly, "Will you not attend to me, and
tell me at least when you will sit to me?"

"Set!" cried she. "When there's nae wark to be done stanning."

And with this she was gone.

At the foot of the stairs, she said to her brother:

"Puir lad! I'll sune draw auchty punds fra' the sea for him, with my
feyther's nets."

As she disappeared, Mrs. Gatty appeared. "And this is the woman whose
mind was not in her dirty business," cried she. "Does not that open your
eyes, Charles?"

"Ah! Charles," added she, tenderly, "there's no friend like a mother."

And off she carried the prize--his vanity had been mortified.

And so that happened to Christie Johnstone which has befallen many a
woman--the greatness of her love made that love appear small to her
lover.

"Ah! mother," cried he, "I must live for you and my art; I am not so
dear to her as I thought."

And so, with a sad heart, he turned away from her; while she, with a
light heart, darted away to think and act for him.

CHAPTER XII.

IT was some two hours after this that a gentleman, plainly dressed, but
whose clothes seemed a part of himself (whereas mine I have observed
hang upon me; and the Rev. Josiah Splitall's stick to him)--glided into
the painter's room, with an inquiry whether he had not a picture or two
disposable.

"I have one finished picture, sir," said the poor boy; "but the price is
high!"

He brought it, in a faint-hearted way; for he had shown it to five
picture-dealers, and all five agreed it was hard.

He had painted a lime-tree, distant fifty yards, and so painted it that
it looked something like a lime-tree fifty yards off.

"That was _mesquin,"_ said his judges; "the poetry of painting required
abstract trees, at metaphysical distance, not the various trees of
nature, as they appear under positive accidents."

On this Mr. Gatty had deluged them with words.

"When it is art, truth, or sense to fuse a cow, a horse, and a critic
into one undistinguishable quadruped, with six legs, then it will be
art to melt an ash, an elm, and a lime, things that differ more than
quadrupeds, into what you call abstract trees, that any man who has seen
a tree, as well as looked at one, would call drunken stinging-nettles.
You, who never look at nature, how can you judge the arts, which are all
but copies of nature? At two hundred yards' distance, full-grown trees
are more distinguishable than the animal tribe. Paint me an abstract
human being, neither