Wilbour Carew looked up from his reverie: "To learn to draw correctly and with taste," he said in his gentle,
pedantic voice, "requires a special training which we cannot afford to
give you, Ruhannah."
"Must I wait till I'm twenty-five before I can have my money?" she
asked for the hundredth time. "I do so need it to educate myself. Why
did grandma do such a thing, mother?"
"Your grandmother never supposed you would need the money until you
were a grown woman, dear. Your father and I were young, vigorous, full
of energy; your father's income was ample for us then."
"Have I got to marry a man before I can get enough money to take
lessons in drawing with?"
Her mother's drawn smile was not very genuine. When a child asks such
questions no mother finds it easy to smile.
"If you marry, dear, it is not likely you'll marry in order to take
lessons in drawing. Twenty-five is not old. If you still desire to
study art you will be able to do so."
"Twenty-five!" repeated Rue, aghast. "I'll be an old woman."
"Many begin their life's work at an older age----"
"Mother! I'd rather marry somebody and begin to study art. Oh, don't
you think that even now I could support myself by making pictures for
magazines? Don't you, mother dear?"
"Rue, as your father explained, a special course of instruction is
necessary before one can become an artist----"
"But I do draw very nicely!" She slipped from her chair, ran to the
old secretary where the accumulated masterpieces of her brief career
were treasured, and brought them for her parents' inspection, as she
had brought them many times before.
Her father looked at them listlessly; he did not understand such
things. Her mother took them one by one from Ruhannah's eager hands
and examined these grimy Records of her daughter's childhood.
There were drawings of every description in pencil, in crayon, in
mussy water-colours, done on scraps of paper of every shape and size.
The mother knew them all by heart, every single one, but she examined
each with a devotion and an interest forever new.
There were many pictures of the cat; many of her parents, too--odd,
shaky, smeared portraits all out of proportion, but usually
recognisable.
A few landscapes varied the collection--a view or two of the stone
bridge opposite, a careful drawing of the ruined paper mill. But the
majority of the subjects were purely imaginary; pictures of demons and
angels, of damsels and fairy princes--paragons of beauty--with
castles on adjacent crags and swans adorning convenient ponds.