the cabbages and carrots, etc., on the table beneath, she was feeling that triumph of achievement which sometimes comes to reward a painstaking artist for much discouragement.
So absorbed was she that she did not notice Florence when she rose, at the end of about two hours, and slipped quietly out of the house. She had seen the family returning, and she went to meet them. Her explanation, graciously and smilingly given, was received in the same spirit, and the two women and several children had soon filed noiselessly into the rear of the room and stood there, silent and delighted, watching the progress of the young artist's work. Florence had given them some coins, which to their frugal minds seemed an inordinate price to pay for the privilege accorded, and they were evidently in high good humor.
Presently Ethel, in a pause of her breathless interest, happened to turn her head and catch sight of them. She had a brush between her white teeth, but she smiled radiantly, and, taking it out, came forward to greet them. She felt, however, a certain hesitation as to how to deal with this strange people, and was glad to accept the word of Florence that she had made everything right, and to express her thanks, merely. At the same time she offered to stop work, in order that the details of her study might be put into more active use. But the women protested, declaring that dinner could wait until the picture was done, and showing such evident desire that she should not interrupt her work, that she consented to go on a little longer.
"But why does she not paint the Holy Mother and the Blessed Child, if she can paint like that?" said one of the women aside to Florence. "My nephew, Anton Wald, is a painter. He made the picture of the Holy Family on the outside of our house, but he would not paint such things as kettles and cabbages! He is the finest painter in the whole valley, though he is angry if I say so, and sometimes he throws down his brush and will not paint again for months, because he says the pictures in his mind are beautiful, but that they are hideous when he puts them down. That is only his strange way, though, for his pictures are most beautiful, as you can see from the one on my house, and all the new head-marks in the churchyard are done by him, and some most beautiful andenken. The picture of Frau Muhlau's son,
