Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/163

 a bow and arrows, and was very fond of oranges."

"Well, what else? Is her drapery Roman, or Greek? Describe her dress,—or does n't she wear any?" queried Archie.

"Of course she does," responded Robert severely; "she has on a short skirt to the knee, gaiters,—buskins I believe they call them,—a loose vest, and a wreath of leaves on her head."

"Atalanta—you are sure she is historical?" asked the painter, rubbing his forehead as if to extract the required knowledge from his cranium by means of friction.

"No, no—no," confessed Robert, "I am not sure, but I have that impression. I thought you would know, Archie. What do you painter fellows know if you don't know about people in pictures? It 's your business to know."

The artist was nettled. In all matters of classic and historic lore he had posed with the simple-minded Robert as an authority, though why, as he afterward said to himself, he should be expected to be a peripatetic classical dictionary just because he painted landscapes for a living, was a mystery.

"What are you talking about?" asked one of the guests. "If Feuardent has been confiding the source of his woes to Archie Nelson, we will get the matter out of him if we have to shake