a less direct demand upon his uncle's admiration, but he
was a very good fellow all round. He was big and fair and muscular,
and nothing about him but his spectacles seemed in Thorpe's mind to be
related to his choice of art as a profession. That so robust and hearty
a young fellow should wish to put paint on a canvas with small brushes,
was to the uncle an unaccountable thing. It was almost as if he had
wanted to knit, or do embroidery. Of the idleness and impatience of
discipline which his mother had seemed to allege against him, Thorpe
failed to detect any signs. The young man was never very late in the
morning, and, beside his tireless devotion to the task of hunting up old
pictures in out-of-the-way places, did most of the steward's work of
the party with intelligence and precision. He studied the time-tables,
audited the hotel-bills, looked after the luggage, got up the
street-maps of towns and the like, to such good purpose that they never
lost a train, or a bag, or themselves. Truly, an excellent young man.
Thorpe noted with especial satisfaction his fine, kindly big-brother
attitude toward his sister Julia--and it was impossible for him to
avoid the conviction that Louisa was a simpleton not to appreciate such
children. They did not often allude to their mother; when they did, it
was in language the terms of which seemed more affectionate than the
tone--and Thorpe said often to himself that he did not blame them. It
was not so much that they had outgrown their mother's point of view.
They had never occupied it.

The journey, so far as Thorpe comprehended its character, had been
shaped with about equal regard for Julia's interest in the romance of
history, and Alfred's more technical and practical interest in art.
Each had sufficient sympathy with the tastes of the other, however, to
prevent any tendency to separation. They took their uncle one day to see
where William the Silent was assassinated, and the next to observe how
Rembrandt's theory of guild portrait-painting differed from Van der
Helst's, with a common enthusiasm. He scrutinized with patient loyalty
everything that they indicated to him, and not infrequently they
appeared to like very much the comments he offered. These were chiefly
of a sprightly nature, and when Julia laughed over them he felt that she
was very near to him indeed.

Thus they saw Paris together--where Thorpe did relinquish some of the
multiplied glories of the Louvre to sit in fron