No More Learning

"That's childish," said Maisie, "and I didn't think it of you. It must
be my work. Mine,--mine,--mine! "

"Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers' houses. You are
thoroughly good at that. " Dick was sick and savage.

"Better things than medallions, Dick," was the answer, in tones that
recalled a gray-eyed atom's fearless speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick would
have abased himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.

Next Sunday he laid at Maisie's feet small gifts of pencils that could
almost draw of themselves and colours in whose permanence he believed,
and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded,
among other things, an exposition of the faith that was in him.

Torpenhow's hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency with
which Dick preached his own gospel of Art.

A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it was
Maisie's will and pleasure, and he dragged his words together to make
plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the
whys and wherefores of work. There is not the least difficulty in doing
a thing if you only know how to do it; the trouble is to explain your
method.

"I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand," said Dick,
despairingly, over the modelling of a chin that Maisie complained would
not "look flesh,"--it was the same chin that she had scraped out with
the palette knife,--"but I find it almost impossible to teach you.
There's a queer grim Dutch touch about your painting that I like; but
I've a notion that you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you
never used the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with
flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it yourself, you
shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line
doesn't allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy,
tricky stuff in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing off,--as
I know. That's immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and then I can
tell more about your powers, as old Kami used to say. "

Maisie protested; she did not care for the pure line.

"I know," said Dick. "You want to do your fancy heads with a bunch of
flowers at the base of the neck to hide bad modelling. " The red-haired
girl laughed a little. "You want to do landscapes with cattle knee-deep
in grass to hide bad drawing. You want to do a great deal more than
you can do. You have sense of colour, but you want form. Colour's a
gift,--put it aside and think no more about it,--but form you can be
drilled into.