Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/446

 much money as Dolores's--and sing to the American gentlemen in the Star Hotel. My mother said she was a naughty person, and that she did not dare tell where she got her gold cross and those jet ear-rings. But I liked her very much, for all that; and I'm sure she would not steal, for she used to give me a fresh pine-apple every morning; and whenever her brother José came down from Casa Blanca with the mules and the _pisco_, she sent me a large melon and some lovely roses."

--"That is the house we lived in at Baltimore. It was painted white, and there was a paling in front, and a dooryard with grass. We had some honeysuckles on the porch;--there they are, and there's the grape-vine. I had a dog-house, too, made to look like a church, and my father promised to buy me a Newfoundland dog,--one of those great hairy fellows, with brass collars, you know, that you can ride on,--when he had sold a great many pictures, and made his fortune. But we did not make our fortune in Baltimore, and I never got my dog; so we came here to Tom Tiddler's ground, to pick up gold and silver. When we are fixed, and get a new tent, my father is going to give me a little spade and a cradle, to dig gold enough to buy a Newfoundland dog with, and then I shall borrow a saw and make a dog-house, like the one I had in Baltimore, out of that green chest. Charley Saunders lived in that next house in the picture, and he had a martin-box, with a steeple to it; but his father gave fencing-lessons, and was very rich."

As the intelligent little fellow ran on with his pretty prattle, I was diligently pursuing the lady and child of the specimens through the sketches. On every leaf I encountered them, ever changing, yet always the same. Here was the child by my side,--unquestionably the same; though now I looked in vain for the anxious mouth and the foreboding eyes in his face of careless, hopeful urchinhood. But who was the other?--his mother, no doubt; and yet no trace of resemblance.

"And tell me, who is this beautiful lady, my lad,--here, and here, and here, and here again? You see I recognize her always,--so lovely, and so gentle-looking. Your mother?"

"Oh, no, Sir!" and he laughed,--"my mother is very different from that. That is nobody,--only a fancy sketch."

"Only a fancy sketch!" So, then, I thought, my pretty entertainer, confiding and communicative as you are, it is plain there are some things you do not know, or will not tell.

"She is not any one we ever saw;--she never lived. My father made her out of his own head, as I make stories sometimes; or he dreamed her, or saw her in the fire. But he is very fond of her, I suppose, because he made her himself,--just as I think my own stories prettier than any true ones; and he's always drawing her, and drawing her, and drawing her. I love her, too, very much,--she looks so natural, and has such nice ways. Isn't it strange my father--but he's _so_ clever with his pencil and brushes!--should be able to invent the Lady Angelica? --that's her name. But my mother does not like her at all, and gets out of patience with my father for painting so many of her. Mamma says she has a stuck-up expression,--such a funny word, 'stuck-up'!--and does not look like a lady. Once I told mamma I was sure she was only jealous, and she grew very angry, and made me cry; so now I never speak of Lady Angelica before her. What makes me think my father must have dreamed her is that I dreamed her once myself. I thought she came to me in such a splendid dress, and told me that she was not only a live lady, but my own mother, and that mamma was Hush! This is my father, Sir."

Wonderful! how the lad had changed!--like a phantom, the thoughtless prattler was gone in a moment, and in his place stood the seer-boy of the picture, the profound foreboding eyes fixed anxiously, earnestly, on the singular man who at that moment entered: a singularly small man, cheaply but tidily