Page:Magician 1908.djvu/25

Rh Hobson’s choice, and you’d better put your exquisite sentiments in your pocket.”

Miss Boyd, by one accident after another, had never seen Arthur, but she had heard so much that she looked upon him already as an old friend. She admired him for his talent and strength of character as much as for his loving tenderness to Margaret. She had seen portraits of him, but Margaret said he did not photograph well. She had asked if he was good-looking.

“No, I don’t think he is,” answered Margaret, “but he’s very paintable.”

“That is an answer which has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing,” smiled Susie.

She believed privately that Margaret’s passion for the arts was a not unamiable pose which would disappear when she was happily married. To have half a dozen children was in her mind much more important than to paint pictures. Margaret’s talent was by no means despicable, but Susie was not convinced that callous masters would have been so enthusiastic if Margaret had been as plain and as old as herself.

Miss Boyd was thirty. Her busy life had not caused the years to pass easily, and she looked older. But she was one of those plain women whose plainness does not matter. A gallant Frenchman had to her face called her a belle laide, and, far from denying the justness of his observation, she had been almost flattered. Her mouth was large, and she had little round bright eyes. Her skin was colourless and much disfigured by freckles. Her