Three days after this the picture exhibition opened, and Jeannie and Miss Fortescue, as they strolled out one morning, passed the Guildhall, where placards were up saying that the seventh exhibition of the Wroxton Art union was now open inside. Jeannie wished to go in. Miss Fortescue was certain that she did not.

“All you will see, Jeannie,” she said, “will be about an acre of Wroxton Cathedral, six pictures of sunrise on the Alps, and some studies of carnations. You can see Wroxton Cathedral and the carnations in our own garden, and you can see sunrise on the Alps in any tomato salad.”

“I bet you a sterling shilling,” said Jeannie, “that there is at least one picture that interests us; I have never yet been to any exhibition in which there was not something I liked to look at. Do you take it, Aunt Em?[117]”

“Done,” said Aunt Em.

It was still early, and only a few people were straying about the room, looking as people do at an exhibition, as if they were lost and wanted to find their way out. But an acre of Wroxton Cathedral, as Aunt Em had said, stopped egress on one side, the spears of rose-tinted Alps on another, and several forbidding portraits on a third. At the far end of the room, however, were some ten or twelve people congregated round one picture.

“That will be the one, Aunt Em,” said Jeannie, “over which I shall win my bet. So we’ll look at it last.”

Miss Fortescue smiled in a superior manner.

“That picture is a bereaved party having tea after a funeral,” said Aunt Em; “I feel it in my bones. Come, Jeannie, here are the tomato salads. That’s a beauty, but a little overripe.”

They strolled slowly toward the far end of the room, and while still they were some way off Mrs. Collingwood detached herself from the group surrounding the chief attrac[118]tion and came down the room toward them. Her face was a little flushed, and as she caught sight of them she paused, and then shot by them without a word.

“No manners,” sighed Miss Fortescue. “Now we are getting into the carnations.”

Jeannie had bought a catalogue, and turned to the list of artists exhibiting.

“There’s one by Jack Collingwood,” she said. “Now I am safe to win. Arthur wrote to him to-day asking him to come and stay with us. I hope he’ll come: I’ve never seen him. His pictures are splendid. It’s number 8. Oh, that must be the one all those people are standing round. Let’s go and look at it.”

“Tea after a funeral,” said Aunt Em.

No fresh arrivals had come in lately, and by the time they got near the picture there was no one by it. Suddenly Jeannie quickened her pace.

“Aunt Em, come here,” she said.

They stood before the picture for a moment in silence, to which its worth as a work of art alone entitled it. The whole thing was admirable. A stretch of lank, thick grass,[119] starred with meadow-sweet and ragged robin ran from side to side of the canvas. The nearer edge of this was broken away, showing a chalky soil, and from it there ran at a slight angle a couple of wooden planks with a handrail crossing a stream which lay invisible but for a streak of water underneath the chalky bank. A few tall grasses in the immediate foreground round the nearer edge of the plank bridge showed where the stream ended. In the middle of it, cutting the picture nearly in two, was the figure of a girl, dressed in black, hatless, and keeping off a puppy with her parasol. Round the dog was a halo of spray, and he was in the middle of shaking himself, for his head was curly, his flanks and tail still smooth. It was an inimitable representation of a moment. One almost expected to see the halo of spray spread further, and the hind part of the dog grow curly. But if Jack had been successful with the dog, he had surpassed himself in the girl’s figure and face. She lived utterly and entirely in the present, and had no thoughts but amused apprehensions for her dress. Her head was bent forward, following the bend of her arm[120] and the parasol, and the face a little foreshortened. But every inch of her laughed.

Jeannie looked at it in silence. Suddenly bending forward and pointing at it (the picture was hung rather low), she laughed too.

“Oh, it is admirable! it is simply admirable!” she cried. “And I never, never heard of such a piece of impertinence in my life. Aunt Em, it’s the best thing I ever saw. Look at the dog; why, Toby would recognise it, I believe. And look at me! Certainly I recognise it. But what cheek! My goodness, what cheek!”

Aunt Em fumbled in her purse.

“A sterling shilling,” she observed, laconically. “Now, Jeannie, it would be more decent if you came away. We will talk about this elsewhere.”

“Oh, one moment,” said Jeannie. “You see, I can’t come here again and look at it, as you can. Aunt Em, I remember the afternoon so well. It was when we had been down at the mill. But how on earth could Mr. Collingwood—Well, I suppose I must go. Oh, Aunt Em, mind you don’t tell Arthur about it. I have my reasons.[121]”

They walked out of the exhibition without looking at the acre............