White Lilac | Page 9

sat down, and presently Lilac was able to say: "Oh, Agnetta, the artist gentleman wants to put me in a picture!"
"Whatever do you mean, Lilac White?" was Agnetta's only reply. Her slightly disapproving voice calmed Lilac's excitement a little.
"This is how it was," she continued more quietly. "You know he's lodging at the `Three Bells?' and he comes an' sits at the bottom of our hill an' paints all day."
"Of course I know," said Agnetta. "It's a poor sort of an object he's copyin', too--Old Joe's tumble-down cottage. I peeped over his shoulder t'other day--'taint much like."
"Well, I pass him every day comin' from school, and he always looks up at me eager without sayin' nothing. But this morning he says, `Little gal,' says he, `I want to put you into my picture.'"
"Lor'!" put in Agnetta, "whatever can he want to paint you for?"
"So I didn't say nothing," continued Lilac, "because he looked so hard at me that I was skeert-like. So then he says very impatient, `Don't you understand? I want you to come here in that frock and that bonnet in your hand, and let me paint you, copy you, take your portrait. You run and ask Mother.'"
"I never did!" exclaimed Agnetta, moved at last. "Whatever can he want to do it for? An' that frock, an' that silly bonnet an' all! He must be a crazy gentleman, I should say." She gave a short laugh, partly of vexation.
"But that ain't all," continued Lilac; "just as I was turning to go he calls after me, `What's yer name?' And when I told him he shouts out, `What!' with his eyes hanging out ever so far."
"Well, I dare say he thought it was a silly-sounding sort of a name," observed Agnetta.
"He said it over and over to hisself, and laughed right out--`Lilac White! White Lilac!' says he. `What a subjeck! What a name! Splendid!' An' then he says to me quieter, `You're a very nice little girl indeed, and if Mother will let you come I'll give you sixpence for every hour you stand.' So then I went an' asked Mother, and she said yes, an' then I ran all the way here to tell you."
Lilac looked round as she finished her wonderful story. Agnetta's eyes were travelling slowly over her cousin's whole person, from her face down to the thick, laced boots on her feet, and back again. "I can't mek out," she said at length, "whatever it is that he wants to paint you for, and dressed like that! Why, there ain't a mossel of colour about you! Now, if you had my Sunday blue!"
"Oh, Agnetta!" exclaimed Lilac at the mention of such impossible elegance.
"And," pursued Agnetta, "a few artificials in yer hair, like the ladies in our Book of Beauty, that 'ud brighten you up a bit. Bella's got some red roses with dewdrops on 'em, an' a caterpillar just like life. She'd lend you 'em p'r'aps, an' I don't know but what I'd let you have my silver locket just for once."
"I'm afraid he wouldn't like that," said Lilac dejectedly, "because he said quite earnest, `Mind you bring the bonnet'."
She saw herself for a moment in the splendid attire Agnetta had described, and gave a little sigh of longing.
"I must go back," she said, getting up suddenly, "Mother'll want me. There's lots to do at home."
"I'll go with you a piece," said Agnetta; "we'll go through the farmyard way so as I can leave the basin."
This was a longer way home for Lilac than across the fields, but she never thought of disputing Agnetta's decision, and the cousins left the orchard by another gate which led into the garden. It was not a very tidy garden, and although some care had been bestowed on the vegetables, the flowers were left to come up where they liked and how they liked, and the grass plot near the house was rank and weedy. Nevertheless it presented a gay and flourishing appearance with its masses of polyanthus in full bloom, its tulips, and Turk's head lilies, and lilac bushes. There was one particular bed close to the gate which had a neater appearance than the rest, and where the flowers grew in a well-ordered manner as though accustomed to personal attention. The edges of the turf were trimly clipped, and there was not a weed to be seen. It had a mixed border of forget-me-not and London pride.
"How pretty your flowers grow!" said Lilac, stopping to look at it with admiration.
"Oh, that's Peter's bed," said Agnetta carelessly, snapping off some blossoms. "He's allays mucking at it in his spare time--not that he's got much, there's so much to do on the farm."
The house was now in front of them, and a little to the left the various, coloured