The Boy Artist. A Tale for the Young

Excerpt

THE PICTURE.

H, Madge, just stay as you are; there—your head a little more turned this way."

"But, Raymond, I can't possibly make the toast if I do."

"Never mind the toast; I shan't be many minutes," said the boy who was painting in the window, while he mixed some colours in an excited, eager manner.

"The fire is very hot. Mayn't I move just to one side?"

"No; it is the way that the firelight is falling on your hair and cheek that I want. Please, Madge; five minutes."

"Very well," and the patient little sister dropped the toasting-fork, and folded her hands in her lap, with the scorching blaze playing on her forehead and cheek, and sparkling in her deep brown eyes.

The boy went on with rapid, bold strokes, while a smile played over his compressed lips as he glanced at Madge every few moments.

"The very thing I have been watching for—that warm, delicious glow—that red light slanting over her face;—glorious!" and he shook back the hair from his forehead, and worked on unconscious of how the minutes flew by.

"Raymond, it is very hot."

"There—one moment more, please, Madge."

One minute—two—three, fled by, and then Raymond threw down his brush and came over to his sister's side.

"Poor little Madge," and he laid his hand coaxingly on her silky hair. "Perhaps you have made my fortune."

This was some small consolation for having roasted her face, and she went to look at the picture. "I'm not as pretty as that, Raymond."

"FACES IN THE FIRE."

"Well, artists may idealize a little; may they not?"

"Yes. What is this to be called?"

"Faces in the Fire."

"Shall you sell it?"

"I shall try."

THE COTTAGE IN THE COUNTRY.

Raymond Leicester had not a prepossessing face; it was heavy, and to a casual observer, stupid. He had dark hazel eyes, shaded by an overhanging brow and rather sweeping eyelashes; a straight nose, and compressed lips, hiding a row of defective teeth; a high massive forehead and light hair, which was seldom smooth, but very straight. This he had a habit of tossing back with a jerk when he was excited; and sometimes the dull eyes flashed with a very bright sparkle in them when he caught an idea which pleased him,—for Raymond was an artist, not by profession, but because it was in his heart to paint, and he could not help himself. He was sixteen now, and Madge was twelve. Madge was the only thing in the world that he really cared for, except his pictures. Their mother was dead, Madge could hardly remember her; but Raymond always had an image before him of a tender, sorrowful woman, who used to hold him in her arms, and whisper to him, while the hot tears fell upon his baby cheeks,—"You will comfort me, my little son. You will take care of your mother and of baby Madge." And he remembered the cottage in the country where they had lived, the porch where the rose-tree grew, the orchard and the moss-grown well, the tall white lilies in the garden that stood like fairies guarding the house, and the pear-tree that was laden with fruit.

He remembered how his mother had sat in that porch with him, reading stories to him out of the Bible, but often lifting her sad pale face and looking down the road as if watching for some one....