Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/192

 cried to one another so merrily that the spiders, who are not companionable creatures, came to the doors of their dens to chuckle too. A sign-post! Lampblack, stretched out in joy upon the board, roused himself and gazed at the change. He had been made into seven letters, thus:

BANDITA.

This word in the Italian country, where the English painter's studio was, means, Do not trespass, Do not shoot, Do not show yourself here: anything, indeed, that is uncivil to all comers. In these seven letters, outspread upon the board, was Lampblack disgraced!

Farewell, hopes and dreams! He had been employed to paint a sign-board, a thing stoned by the boys, blown on by the winds, gnawed by the rats, and drenched with the winter's rains. Better the dust and the cobwebs of his old corner than such shame as this!

But there was no help for it. He was dried with a drench of turpentine, hastily clothed in a coat of copal, and, ere he yet was fully aware of all his misery, was being borne away upon the great board out of doors and handed to the gardener. It was the master himself who did this to him. As the door closed on him, he heard all the colors laughing, and the laugh of little Rose Madder was highest of all as she cried to Naples Yellow, who was