"Yes--but that doesn't hurt his pictures, Sue."
There was a slight trace of impatience in Oliver's tone.
"Well, perhaps it doesn't--but you don't want to be like him. I wouldn't like to see you, Ollie, going about with a picture under your arm that everybody knew you had painted yourself. And suppose that they would want to buy your pictures? How would you feel now to be taking other people's money for things you had painted?"
The boy caught his breath. It seemed useless to pursue the talk with Sue. She evidently had no sympathy with his aspirations.
"No--but I wish I could paint as he does," he answered, mechanically.
Sue saw the change in his manner. She realized, too, that she had hurt him in some way. She drew nearer and put her hand on his arm.
"Why, you can, Ollie. You can do anything you want to; Miss Lavinia told me so." The little witch was mistress of one art--that of holding her lover--but that was an art of which all the girls about Kennedy Square approved.
"No, I can't," he replied, forgetting in the caressing touch of her hand the tribute to his ability, and delighted that she was once more in sympathy with him. "Mother wouldn't think of my being an artist. She doesn't understand how I feel about it, and Miss Lavinia, somehow, doesn't seem to be favorable to it either. I've talked to her lots of times--she was more encouraging at first, but she doesn't seem to like the idea now. I've been hoping she'd fix it so I could speak to mother about it. Now she tells me I had better wait. I can't see why Miss Lavinia knows what an artist's life can be, for she knew plenty of painters when she was in London with her father, and she loves pictures, too, and is a good judge--nobody here any better. She told me only a week ago how much one of these Englishmen was paid for a little thing as big as your hand, but I've forgotten the amount. I don't see why I can't paint as well as those fellows. Do you know, Sue, I'm beginning to think that about half the people in Kennedy Square are asleep? They really don't seem to think there is anything respectable but the law. If they are right, how about all the men who painted the great pictures and built all the cathedrals, or the men who wrote all the poems and histories? Mother, of course, wants me to be a lawyer. Because I'm fitted for it?--not a bit of it! Simply because father was one before me and his father before him, and Uncle John Tilghman another, and so on back to the deluge."
Sue drew away a little and turned her head toward the Square as if in search of someone. Oliver noticed the movement and his heart sank again. He saw but too clearly how little impression the story of his ambitions had made upon her. Then the thought flashed into his mind that he might have offended her in some way, clashing against her traditions and her prejudices as he had done. He bent toward her and laid his hand in hers.
"Little girl," he said, in a softened tone, "I can't make you unhappy, too. Mother is enough for me to worry about--I haven't talked it all out to you before, but don't you get a wrong idea of what I'm going to do--" and he looked up into her face and tightened his hold upon her fingers, his eyes never wavering from her own.
The girl allowed his hand to remain an instant, then quickly withdrew her own and started up. Coyness is sometimes fear in the timid heart that is stepping into the charmed circle for the first time.
"There goes Ella Dorsey and Jack--" she cried, springing down the steps. "Ella! El--la!" and an answering halloo came back, and the two started from Malachi's steps and raced up the street to join their young friends.
