Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/19

Rh The hawser thumped on the wharf; the gangplank slid to within a yard of the unconscious model. She had gauged it perfectly. Down they came, captain and mate, one sixty, the other, say twenty- four, both well-muscled, the younger without the seasoning.

"The old, old story of the sea, trite, commonplace, and yet not so commonplace, after all," sentimentalized the queer-hatted one. "The women waiting for 'their men,' but oh Lord!"—and he busily plied his crumbly eraser again.

"I've turned that brow into a regular movie Madonna's—Madonna's suggested, but, Man, put in the common sense! The nose, don't snub it—threatens to turn up but—for Heaven's sake! what does it do?—just—doesn't. And those features to which I've given a detestable movie cuteness—now she's three-quarters, I can see it—escape the 'diminutive'—by a fraction—chin, too, the 'fragile.'

"Now, steady there, Little Lady, ple-a-ase—I must get those lines—those fine, faintly-twitching, little lines, around your black eyes, and so delicately traced from the base of your nose. They mean a lot, and they crinkle like tiny ripples in a pond as you shiver yourself with excitement—like a silver birch in the breeze."

He drew back, surveyed the girl near the gangpankgangplank [sic], the result on the canvas, then swore in disgust.

"I can mix paints—but not that mixture—and, top to toe, it's knit into the line,—delicacy and strength, same as the birch, the racehorse, that bird out there."

Almost "out of drawing," too, seemed that possessive, "their men." Father, uncle, godfather, the old one perhaps,