"We strolled round this morning and saw Joan Tregenza in an iron hoop with
a pail of water slung at either hand."
"So your picture begins and ends where it is, Barron, my friend; in your
imagination. Did it strike you when you first saw that vision of loveliness
in dirty drab that she was hardly the girl to have gone unpainted till
now?" asked Brady.
"The possibility of previous pictures is hardly likely to weigh with me.
Why, I would paint a drowned sailor if the subject attracted me, and that
though you have done it," answered the other, nodding toward a big canvas
in the corner, where Brady's picture for the year approached completion.
"My dear chap, we all worship Joan--at a distance. She is not to be
painted. Tears and prayers are useless. She has a flinty father--a
fisherman, who looks upon painting as a snare of the devil and sees every
artist already wriggling on the trident in his mind's eye. Joan has also a
lover, who would rather behold her dead than on canvas."
"In fact these Methodist folk take us to be what you really are," said
Brady bluntly. "Old Tregenza tars us every one with the same brush. We are
lost sinners all."
"Well, why trouble him? A fisherman would have his business on the sea.
Candidly, I must paint her. The wish grows upon me."
"Even money you don't get as much as a, sketch," said Murdoch.
"Have any of you tried approaching her directly, instead of her relations?"
"She's as shy as a hawk, man.
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