"Feel mine," said Gardiner, crimson with the exertion of lifting his tiny arm to the position of his cousin's.

"Immense, Gardiner!" Fairfax complimented, "immense."

"Feel mine," cried Bella, and the sculptor touched between his fingers the fine little member.

"Great, little cousin!"

"I'll be the gladiator's wife and applaud him from the Coliseum and throw flowers on him."

Fairfax lingered with them another hour, laughing at his simplicity in finding them such companions. With compunction, he endeavoured to take up his lesson again with Bella, unwilling and recalcitrant. She drew a few half-hearted circles, a page of wobbly lines, and at the suspicion of tears Fairfax desisted, surprised to find how the idea of tears from her touched him. Then in the window between them, he watched as the children told him they always did, for "mother's car to come home."

"She is sharping," exclaimed Gardiner, slowly; "she has to sharp very hard, my mother does. She comes back in the cars, only she never comes,"

he finished with patient fatality.

"Silly," exclaimed his sister, "she always comes at dinner-time. And we bet on the cars, Cousin Antony. Now let's say it will be the seventy-first. We have to put it far away off," she explained, "'cause we're beginning early."

Fairfax left them, touched by their patience in watching for the mother bird. He promised to return soon, soon, to go on with his wonderful tales. As he went downstairs Bella called after him.

"But you didn't say _which_ car you bet on, Cousin Antony."

And Fairfax called back in his Southern drawl: "I reckon she'll come in a pumpkin chariot." And he heard their delighted giggles as he limped downstairs.

CHAPTER IX

He avoided his uncle, Mr. Carew, and made up his mind that if the master of the house were brusque to him, he would not return, were the threshold worn never so dear by little feet. Bella had the loveliest little feet a fellow connoisseur of plastic beauty could wish to see, could wish to watch twinkle in run-down slippers, in scuffled boots--in boots where a b.u.t.ton or two was always lacking--and once when she kicked off her strap slipper at a lesson Fairfax saw, through a hole in the stocking, one small perfect toe--a toe of Greek marble perfection, a most charming, snowy, rosy bit of flesh, and he imagined how adorable the little foot must be.

To an audience, composed of a dreamy boy and an ardent, enthusiastic little girl, Fairfax confessed his talent, spoke of his hopes, of his art, even hinted at genius, and one day fetched his treasures, his bits of moistened clay, to show the children.

"Oh, they are perfectly _beautiful_, Cousin Antony. Wouldn't you do Gardiner's head for mother?"

On this day, with his overcoat and hat, Fairfax had laid by a paper parcel. It was stormy, and around the upper windows the snow blew and the winds cried. Propped up by pillows, Gardiner, in his red flannel dressing-gown, nestled in the corner of the sofa. Antony regarded Bella, red as a cardinal bird in her homely dress; he had seen her wear no other dress and would have regretted the change.

"Oh, I'll do Gardiner one of these days, but I reckon I'll make another study to-day."

"Me?" Bella shook back her mane.

Her cousin considered her with an impersonal eye, whose expression she did not understand to be the artist's gauge and measure.

"Bella," he said shortly, "I'm going to make a cast of your foot."

She was sitting on the sofa and drew her feet under her.

"Only just my foot, Cousin Antony, not all of me?"

"Come now," said the sculptor, "it won't take long. It's heaps of sport."

He unrolled the paper parcel he had brought, unfolding a ma.s.s of snowy, delectable looking powder.

"Ask old Ann to fetch us a couple of basins, deep ones, some water and a little oil and salt."

When after toilsome journeys up and down the stairs of the four-storied house, the things had been fetched, Fairfax mixed his plaster, eagerly watched by the children. Perched on the edge of the divan, Bella brooded over the foaming, marvellous concoction, into whose milky bubbles she saw art fall like a star--a genius blossom like a flower. She gazed at Antony's hands as they plunged in and came out dripping; gazed as though she expected him to bring forth some peerless image his touch had called to life. His shirt sleeves rolled up over his fine arms, his close high-cropped and sunny hair warm upon his brow, his eyes sparkling, he bent an impa.s.sioned face over the milky plaster.

"Now," Fairfax said, "hurry along, Bella, I'm ready!"

She responded quietly. "I'm here. It's like a snow pie, Cousin Antony."

"Take off your shoe and stocking."

"Cousin Antony!"

A painful flush of red, the drawing under her more closely of the little legs, showed how far she had been from comprehending.

"Casts are taken from life, Bella," informed her cousin practically, "you'll see. I'm going to make a model from life, then watch what happens. I reckon you're not afraid, honey?"

Gardiner kicked his foot out from under the rugs. "Do mine."

With the first timidity Antony had seen her display, Bella divested herself of her shoe and drew off her dark stocking, and held him out the little naked foot, a charming, graceful concession to art.

"It's clean," she said simply.

He took it in his big hand and it lay like a pearl and coral thing in his palm. Bella did not hear his murmured artistic ecstasies. Fairfax deftly oiled the foot, kneeling before it as at a shrine of beauty. He placed it in one of the basins and poured the plaster slowly over it, sternly bidding her to control her giggles and her "ouches" as it could not harm.

"Keep perfectly still. Do not budge till the plaster sets."

"Oh, it's setting already," she told him, "_hard_! You won't break off my foot, Cousin Antony?"

"Nonsense."

Whilst the cast set he recited for them "St. Agnes's Eve," a great favourite with the children, beyond their comprehension, but their hearts nevertheless stirred to the melody. As Fairfax leant down to break the model Bella helped him bravely.

"_Now_, might I put on my stocking, Cousin Antony?"

He had been pouring the warm plaster into the mould and had forgotten her, and was reproached.

The twilight gathered and made friends with the storm as they waited for the cast to harden. Old Ann came in and lighted the gas above the group on the old divan.

"Be the hivenly powers! Mr. Fairfax, ye've here a power of a dirt."

Fairfax, who had taken a fancy to the patient old creature, who had'

known his mother and was really more a slave to the children than his own black Mammy, bore the scolding peacefully.

"Ye're the childest of the three, sor."

Antony caught her arm. "Wait and see, old Ann," and he kneeled before the cooled plaster and broke his model, released his work and held up the cast.