"Score me one!" he shouted, in high glee. "Listen to Webster! 'Wit. 3.

Felicitous a.s.sociation of objects not usually connected, so as to produce a pleasant surprise.' Quite at your service, my artful relative, whenever you would like a sitting!"

"I protest! You haven't won!"

"Haven't won, indeed! I leave it to the gentlemen of the jury. Is not the name of Prize Pig for Miss Eleanor Merritt a 'felicitous a.s.sociation of objects not usually connected'?"

"No! The a.s.sociation is infelicitous, and consequently it does not produce a 'pleasant surprise.'"

The family listened with the amused tolerance with which they usually left such discussions to the two chief wranglers.

"I maintain," insisted Ned, "that the a.s.sociation of objects is felicitous, and must be, because it was inst.i.tuted by Miss Eleanor Merritt herself. She won the prize, and she said she was a pig."

"But it doesn't produce a pleasant surprise," Madge objected.

"I beg your pardon! It _has_ produced a pleasant surprise, as I can testify, for I have experienced it myself. What is your verdict, Mother?"

"My verdict is, that it's a pity, as I always thought it was, that you are not to be a lawyer, and that Madge can't do better than practise her drawing by making the allegorical sketch."

That Mrs. Burtwell should be on Ned's side was a foregone conclusion, and Madge appealed to her father.

"Father, is calling Eleanor Merritt a prize pig a form of wit?"

"Pretty poor wit I should call it!"

"Father is on my side!" shouted Ned. "He says it's poor wit, which is only one way of saying that it is wit!"

"Can wit be poor?" asked Julia.

"Father says it can."

"Then it isn't wit!" Madge protested.

"I should like to know why not. Old Mr. Tanner is a poor man, but he's a man for all that, and votes at elections for the highest bidder.

And your logic's poor, but I suppose you'd call it logic!"

"I have an idea!" cried Madge. "I'm going to make my fortune out of you! I'm going to make a pair of excruciatingly funny pictures of you!

The first shall be called _The Student and Logic_, and the second shall be called _Logic and the Student!_ In the first the student shall be patting Logic on the head, and in the second,--oh, it's an inspiration!"

And forthwith Madge seized a large sheet of paper and began work.

"I'm not sure that this won't be the beginning of a series," she declared. "When it's finished I shall send it to a funny paper and get fifty dollars for it,--and when I have got fifty dollars for it, Father will send me to Paris; won't you, Daddy, dear?"

"What's that? What's that?" asked Mr. Burtwell.

"When I get fifty dollars,--_or more!_--for my Student, you will send me to Europe!"

"Oh, yes! And when you're Queen of England I shall be presented at Court! Listen to what the paper says: 'The Honourable Jacob Luddington and family have just returned from an extensive foreign tour. The two Miss Luddingtons were presented at the Court of St. James, where their exceptional beauty and elegance are said to have made a marked impression.' Good for the Honourable Jacob! His father was my father's ch.o.r.e-man, and here are his daughters hobn.o.bbing with crowned heads!"

From which digression it is fair to conclude that Mr. Burtwell did not attach any great importance to his daughter's question or to his own answer. But Madge put away the promise in the safest recesses of her memory as carefully as she had tucked the letter to her "dear pickpocket" inside the red morocco pocket-book. It seemed as if the one were likely to be called for about as soon as the other,--"which means never at all!" she said to herself, with a profound sigh.

"The throes of creation have begun," Ned chuckled; and then, as he watched his sister's business-like proceedings, marvelling the while at what he secretly considered her quite phenomenal skill, he let himself be sufficiently carried away by enthusiasm to remark, "I say, Madge, you're no fool at that sort of thing, if you _are_ a girl!"

CHAPTER III

NOAH'S DOVE

"I really think, Miss Burtwell, you might be a little more careful,"

Miss Isabella Ricker wailed, in a tone of hopeless remonstrance. It was the third time that morning that Madge had knocked against her easel, and human nature could bear no more.

"I think so too," said Madge, in a voice as dejected as her victim's own. "If I only knew how to prowl more intelligently, I would, I truly would."

"Tie yourself to your own easel," suggested Delia Smith; "then that will have to go first."

"You're a good one to talk!" cried Mary Downing. "You've upset my things twice this very morning!"

"Put those two behind each other," Josephine Wilkes suggested. "It will be a lesson to them."

"And who's going to sit behind the rear one?" somebody asked.

"Harriet Wells," Delia Smith proposed. "Mr. Salome said 'very good' to her this morning; she must be proof against adversity."

"No one is proof against adversity," Madge declared, in a tragic tone; but her remark pa.s.sed unheeded. The girls were already at work again, and nothing short of another wreck was likely to distract their attention. The sc.r.a.pe of a palette-knife, the tread of a prowler, or the shoving of a chair to one side, were the only sounds audible in the room, excepting when the occasional roar of an electric car or the rattle of a pa.s.sing waggon came in at the open window. It was the first warm day in April.

Artful Madge's sententious observation with regard to adversity was the fruit of bitter experience. Misfortune's arrows had been raining thick and fast about her, and although she was holding her ground against them very well, she felt that adversity was a subject on which she was fitted to speak with authority.

In the first place, her Student series was proving to be quite as much of a Noah's Dove as the first set of sketches which had so signally failed to find a permanent roosting-place in an inhospitable world.

Only yesterday the familiar parcel had made its appearance on the front-entry table, that table which, for a year past, she had never come in sight of without a quicker beating of the heart. If she ever did have a bit of success, she often reflected, that piece of ancestral mahogany was likely to be the first to know of it. How often she had dreamed of the small business envelope, addressed in an unfamiliar hand, which might one day appear there! It would be half a second before she should take in the meaning of it. Then would come a premonitory thrill, instantly justified by a glance at the upper left-hand corner of the envelope, where the name of some great periodical would seem literally blazoned forth, however small the type in which it was printed. And then,--oh, then! the tearing open of the envelope, the unfolding of the sheet with trembling fingers, the check! Would it be for $10 or $15 or even $25, and might there be a word of editorial praise or admonition? Foolish, foolish dreams! And there was that hideous parcel, which she was getting to hate the very sight of! As she squeezed a long rope of burnt-sienna upon her palette, she made up her mind that she would wait a week before exposing herself to another disappointment. Perhaps the Student would improve with keeping, like violins and old masters. Certainly if he was anything like his prototype he needed maturing.

Meanwhile the model's mouth was proving as troublesome to paint as Eleanor's had been, and as Madge grew more and more perplexed with the problem of it she thought of the miniature with a fresh pang. For she had lost it! Three days ago it had somehow slipped from her possession. Had she left it lying on the table in the Public Library?

n.o.body there had seen anything of it. But on the very day of her loss she had been at the Library, examining the current numbers of all the ill.u.s.trated papers, in the hope of gleaning some hint as to editorial tastes. She remembered reading Eleanor's last letter there, the letter in which her friend had written that she was to have two years more of Paris. She had read the letter through twice, and then she had taken out the miniature and had a good look at it. To think of Eleanor, having two more years of Paris! And it had all come about so simply!

She had merely persuaded her cousin, Mr. Hicks, to advance a few hundred dollars till she should be of age and at liberty to sell a bond.

"There isn't anybody that believes in me," Madge had told herself; and then she had thought of something that Mr. Salome had said to her a few days ago, something that she would have considered it very unbecoming to repeat, even to Eleanor, but the memory of which, thus suddenly recalled, had filled her with such hopefulness that she had sped homeward to the mahogany table almost with a conviction of success. Was it in that sudden rush of hopefulness, so mistaken, alas, so groundless, that she had left the little morocco case lying about?

Or had she pulled it out of her pocket with her handkerchief? Or had she really had her pocket picked?

What wonder that in the stress of anxious speculation she was making bad work of her painting! This would never do! She took a long stride backwards, and over went Miss Ricker's long-suffering easel, p.r.o.ne upon the floor, carrying with it a neighbouring structure of similar unsteadiness, which was, however, happily empty, save for a couple of jam-pots filled with turpentine and oil! These plunged with headlong impetuosity into s.p.a.ce, forming little rivers of stickiness, as they rolled half-way across the room. Everybody rushed to the rescue, while Miss Ricker gazed upon the catastrophe with stony displeasure.

By a miracle, the canvas, though "b.u.t.ter-side-down," had escaped unscathed. Not until she was a.s.sured of this did the culprit speak.

"I'm a disgrace to the cla.s.s," she said, "and expulsion is the only remedy. Tell Mr. Salome that I have forfeited every right to membership, and it's quite possible that I may never exaggerate another detail as long as I live."

"Time's up in two minutes," Mary Downing remarked, in her matter-of-fact voice, as she dabbed some yellow-ochre upon her subject's chin. "I rather think you'll come back to-morrow."

"But I do think it's somebody's else turn to work behind her," said Josephine Wilkes.