"
She laughed.
"Don't laugh," he said, very seriously. "Only an artist would laugh at me,
not you who love Nature. There lives a great painter, Joan, who paints
pictures that nobody else in the wide world can paint. He is growing old,
but he is not too old to take trouble still. Once, when he was a young man,
he drew a lemon-tree far away in Italy. It was only a little lemon-tree,
but the artist rose morning after morning and drew it leaf by leaf, twig by
twig, until every leaf and bud and lemon and bough had appeared. It was not
labored and false; it was grand because it was true: a joy forever; work
Old Masters had loved; full of distinction and power and patience almost
Oriental. A thing, Joan Tregenza, worth a wilderness of 'harmonies' and
'impressions,' 'nocturnes' and 'notes,' smudges and audacities. But I
suppose that is all gibberish to you?"
"Iss, so it be," she admitted.
"Learn to love everything that is beautiful, my good child. But I think you
do, unconsciously perhaps."
"I don't take much 'count of things."
"Yes, unconsciously. You have a cowslip there stuck in your frock, though
where you got it from I can't imagine. The flower is a month too early."
"Iss, 'tis, I found en in a lew, sunshiny plaace. Us have got a frame for
growin' things under glass, an' it had bin put down 'pon top this cowslip
an' drawed 'en up."
"Will you give it to me?"
She did so, and he smelled it.
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