Page:Mistress Madcap Surrenders (1926).pdf/19

 By some happy chance, he had gotten the misfit eye to respond to his coaxing brush. Mehitable clapped her hands.

"Well done, Master Wright!" she cried cordially. "Indeed," she hurried on, while Charity smilingly added her little chirp of praise, "I know not how ye thought o' such a clever sign for the Horse's Neck Tavern!"

A flush of pride suffused the old man's face; but he shook his head. "It be nowt!" he answered, with false modesty. "Gin yo' do a thing lang enough, lassie, yo' canna help doin' it weel! Like Mither tendin' her geese," he added slyly. "A bonnier flock nor a more expert goose girl yo' will search far to find. And why? Experience, Hitty, time and patience—I ha' been a-paintin' signs and Mither ha' been tendin' her geese for many, many years! Time and patience can do all things, they say. Aiblins they be richt!

Master Wright turned and looked away, as though he could see, through the walls of his kitchen, that little village in old Scotland where his apprenticeship had been served under a hard taskmaster whose "weel done" he had never heard because, with youthful impatience, he had run away.

"Time and patience!" he repeated, sighing. "I might hae been a court painter, who knows, 'stead o' a struggling farmer and occasional sign painter