send in original drawings without a certificate. Ignorance, you
see, pure clodhopper ignorance.

Failure waited on her labours; the postman brought them all back again.

Yet in her untaught simplicity she had chosen the line which the very
highest in the profession would probably have advised her to take. She
drew what she knew. The great cart-horse, the old barn up the road, the
hollow tree, the dry reeds, the birds, and chanticleer himself--

High was his comb, and coral red withal,
In dents embattled like a castle wall.

Hardly a circumstance of farm life she did not sketch; the fogger with
his broad knife cutting hay; the ancient labourer sitting in the
wheelbarrow munching his bread-and-cheese, his face a study for Teniers;
the team coming home from plough--winter scenes, most of them, because
it was winter time. There are those who would give fifty pounds for one
of those studies now, crumpled, stained, and torn as they are.

It was a complete failure. Once only she had a gleam of success. Iden
picked up the sketch of the dry reeds in the brook, and after looking
at it, put it in his "Farmer's Calendar," on the mantelshelf. Amaryllis
felt like the young painter whose work is at last hung at the Academy.
His opinion was everything to her. He valued her sketch.

Still, that was not money. The cold wind and the chill of failure still
entered her garret study. But it was neither of these that at length
caused the portfolio to be neglected, she would have worked on and on,
hoping against hope, undaunted, despite physical cold and moral check.
It was the procession of creditors.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXII.

STEADILY they came over from the town, dunning Iden and distracting
Amaryllis in her garret. She heard the heavy footsteps on the path to
the door, the thump, thump with the fist (there was neither knocker nor
bell, country fashion); more thumping, and then her mother's excuses, so
oft repeated, so wearisome, so profitless. "But where is he?" the
creditor would persist. "He's up at the Hayes," or "He's gone to Green
Hills." "Well, when will he be in?" "Don't know." "But I wants to know
when this yer little account is going to be settled." Then a long
narration of his wrongs, threats of "doing summat," i.e., summoning,
grumble, grumble, and so slow, unwilling steps departing.

Very rude men came down from the villages demanding payment in their
rough w