The Coast of Bohemia | Page 7

and he stopped short
and waited for her to speak again.
"If she was to go to New York to take lessons, how do you think she'd
better----" She seemed not to know enough of the situation to formulate
her question farther. He had pity on her ignorance, though he doubted
whether he ought to have.
"Oh, go into the Synthesis," he said briefly.
"The Synthesis?"
"Yes; the Synthesis of Art Studies; it's the only thing. The work is hard,
but it's thorough; the training's excellent, if you live through it."
"Oh, I guess she'd live through it," said the mother with a laugh. She
added, "I don't know as I know just what you mean by the Synthesis of
Art Studies."
"It's a society that the art-students have formed. They have their own
building, and casts, and models; the principal artists have classes
among them. You submit a sketch, and if you get in you work away till
you drop, if you're in earnest, or till you're bored, if you're amusing
yourself."
"And should you think," said the mother gesturing toward him with the
sketches in her hand, "that she could get in?"

"I think she could," said Ludlow, and he acted upon a sudden impulse.
He took a card from his pocketbook, and gave it to the mother. "If
you'll look me up when you come to New York, or let me know, I may
be of use to you, and I shall be very glad to put you in the way of
getting at the Synthesis."
"Thanks," the mother drawled with her eyes on the card. She probably
had no clear sense of the favor done her. She lifted her eyes and smiled
on Ludlow with another kind of intelligence. "You're visiting at Mrs.
Burton's."
"Yes," said Ludlow, remembering after a moment of surprise how
pervasive the fact of a stranger's presence in a village is. "Mr. Burton
can tell you who I am," he added in some impatience with her renewed
scrutiny of his card.
"Oh, it's all right," she said, and she put it in her pocket, and then she
began to drift away a little. "Well, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you."
She hesitated a moment, and then she said, "Well, good afternoon."
"Good-by," said Ludlow, and he lifted his hat and stood bowing her out
of the Fine Arts Department, while she kept her eyes on him to the last
with admiration and approval.
"Well, I declare, Cornelia," she burst out to her daughter, whom she
found glowering at the agricultural implements, "that is about the nicest
fellow! Do you know what he's done?" She stopped and began a search
for her pocket, which ended successfully. "He's given me his name, and
told me just what you're to do. And when you get to New York, if you
ever do, you can go right straight to him."
She handed Ludlow's card to the girl, who instantly tore it to pieces
without looking at it. "I'll never go to him--horrid, mean, cross old
thing! And you go and talk about me to a perfect stranger as if I were a
baby. And now he'll go and laugh at you with the Burtons, and they'll
say it's just like you to say everything that comes into your head, that
way, and think everybody's as nice as they seem. But he isn't nice! He's
horrid, and conceited, and--and--hateful. And I shall never study art

anywhere. And I'd die before I asked him to help me. He was just
making fun of you all the time, and anybody but you would see it,
mother! Comparing me to a hired girl!"
"No, I don't think he did that, Cornelia," said the mother with some
misgiving. "I presume he may have been a little touched up by your
pictures, and wanted to put me down about them----"
"Oh, mother, mother, mother!" The girl broke into tears over the
agricultural implements. "They were the dust under his feet."
"Why, Cornelia, how you talk!"
"I wish you wouldn't talk, mother! I've asked you a thousand times, if
I've asked you once, not to talk about me with anybody, and here you
go and tell everything that you can think of to a person that you never
saw before."
"What did I tell him about you?" asked her mother, with the uncertainty
of ladies who say a great deal.
"You told him how old I was almost to a day!"
"Oh, well, that wasn't anything! I saw he'd got to know if he was to
give any opinion about your going on that was worth having."
"It'll be all over town, to-morrow. Well, never mind! It's the last time
you'll ever have a chance to do it. I'll never, never, never touch a