Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/138

128 clever at water-colors, but haunted with the fear that the public practice of such an art on Sunday was viewed with disfavor in England. Mary exclaimed that this was the respectable fact; and when her brother ridiculed the idea, she told him she had already noticed he had lost all sense of things at home, so that Mr. Bolton-Brown was apparently a better Englishman than he. "He is indeed—he's awfully artificial!" Hugh returned; but it must be added that in spite of this rigor their American friend, when they reached the goal of their walk, was to be perceived in an irregular attitude in the very church-yard. He was perched on an old flat tomb, with a box of colors beside him and a sketch half completed. Hugh asserted that this exercise was the only thing that Mr. Bolton-Brown really cared for, but the young man protested against the imputation in the face of an achievement so modest. He showed his sketch to Mary, however, and it consoled her for not having kept up her own experiments; she never could make her trees so leafy. He had found a lovely bit on the