Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/123

 feeling very much as if he had tied a millstone around his neck.

The adventure with Dear Mother's paint-box had shaken Edward's ambition to be an explorer. And he read no more about dwarfs and gorillas and elephant guns. He had now an intense wish to be an artist. He wished that he had been more attentive at the clay-modeling class where Alice Ruggles had showed so much talent. He might have learned something. But he had missed that opportunity. And now he had no clay to work with, nor paints nor brushes.

There were stubs of pencils to be filched from father's study, and the groceries were usually delivered in wrappings of brown or white paper which could be dampened and flattened out with a warm iron, and upon which it was possible to draw.

Being now keen to learn, it was a pity that Edward could not have had a teacher, for having a fine pair of observing eyes in his head and a flexible hand he must have made quick progress. But in the long run it did not matter. For in a few years' time his own experience and experiments turned teacher, and he could draw anything in creation very swiftly, surely and beautifully.

Dear Mother was down on artists, except Raphæl and the old Italians who depicted religious