n, if he were cross, too."

"He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had
before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off!
I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in
laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had
dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said,
I cut in, short as pie-crust, 'Young man,' I said, 'if you aren't
careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?' And I meant
it."

Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his
teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way
of comment on what he had heard.

Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one
eager to make reparation for an injustice, "It's all right now! A
beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori's where my
dinner-set was bought--a plate, you know, to match the one that got
broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it
Mr. Landini's card, with such a nice message written on it. Don't you
think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening
Charlie Hunt came and was sweet as pie. We're just as good friends as
ever. I'm ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything
I said that didn't seem quite kind. He's all right. It's me that's
crochety.... Isn't that picture far enough along for you to let me see
it?"

"No, Mrs. Hawthorne."

"Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?"

"No."

"I think you're real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?"

"Does sitting bore you so much?"

"Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It's like taking a sea-voyage
with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in
the same number of years on land. I'm getting to feel I know you quite
well."

"Wasn't it clever of me to think of the portrait?"

"Go 'way! D'you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I'm
getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful' easy, don't you? But
you don't hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a
lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate--oh, how I
hate 'em! I hate 'em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you,
Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot
of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it,
you're one of the patientest persons I k