that so failed to reveal it stood about on
pedestals and brackets, on tables and shelves, a little staring white
population, heroic, idyllic, allegoric, mythic, symbolic, in which
'scale' had so strayed and lost itself that the public square and the
chimney-piece seemed to have changed places, the monumental being all
diminutive and the diminutive all monumental; branches at any rate,
markedly, of a family in which stature was rather oddly irrespective
of function, age and sex. They formed, like the Mallows themselves,
poor Brench's own family--having at least to such a degree the note of
familiarity. The occasion was one of those he had long ago learnt to
know and to name--short flickers of the faint flame, soft gusts of a
kinder air. Twice a year regularly the Master believed in his fortune,
in addition to believing all the year round in his genius. This time
it was to be made by a bereaved couple from Toronto, who had given him
the handsomest order for a tomb to three lost children, each of
whom they desired to see, in the composition, emblematically and
characteristically represented.

Such was naturally the moral of Mrs Mallow's question: if their wealth
was to be assumed, it was clear, from the nature of their admiration,
as well as from mysterious hints thrown out (they were a little
odd!) as to other possibilities of the same mortuary sort, what their
further patronage might be; and not less evident that should the
Master become at all known in those climes nothing would be more
inevitable than a run of Canadian custom. Peter had been present
before at runs of custom, colonial and domestic--present at each of
those of which the aggregation had left so few gaps in the marble
company round him; but it was his habit never at these junctures to
prick the bubble in advance. The fond illusion, while it lasted, eased
the wound of elections never won, the long ache of medals and diplomas
carried off, on every chance, by everyone but the Master; it moreover
lighted the lamp that would glimmer through the next eclipse. They
lived, however, after all--as it was always beautiful to see--at a
height scarce susceptible of ups and downs. They strained a point at
times charmingly, strained it to admit that the public was here and
there not too bad to buy; but they would have been nowhere without
their attitude that the Master was always too good to sell. They were
at all events deliciously formed, Peter often said to himself,