Page:An orchard princess (IA orchardprincess00barbiala).pdf/145

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apple-trees confronted him, without contrast of light and shade. Perhaps, she thought ruefully, he was Farrel, the man who painted masses of unrelieved green foliage and called his productions "schemes." He was an odious little man with a yellow Vandyke beard, who talked steadily about himself and his work as long as there was any one to listen. Prudence turned irresolutely toward the road again. But the next glance told her that the man in front of her was far too broad-shouldered for Farrel. In fact, there was something dimly familiar about that back, in spite of the brown velvet. And while she struggled with memory the man leaned back in front of his untouched canvas, waved a mahl-stick gayly back and forth, and sang in time to it in a fairly good tenor,—