She took the torn papers from his hand with a bow, and turned to go.

"Don't go," he said. "You're not going? Don't you want to look at my
picture?"

Now Betty knew as well as you do that you musn't speak to people
unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother
artists" had played ninepins with her little conventions.

"Thank you. I should like to very much," said Betty. "I don't care,"
she said to herself, "and besides, it's not as if he were a young man,
or a tourist, or anything. He must be ever so old--thirty; I shouldn't
wonder if he was thirty-five."

When she saw the picture she merely said, "Oh," and stood at gaze. For
it _was_ a picture--a picture that, seen in foreign lands, might well
make one sick with longing for the dry turf and the pale dog violets
that love the chalk, for the hum of the bees and the scent of the
thyme. He had chosen the bold sweep of the brown upland against the
sky, and low to the left, where the line broke, the dim violet of the
Kentish hills. In the green foreground the pink figure, just roughly
blocked in, was blocked in by a hand that knew its trade, and was
artist to the tips of its fingers.

"Oh!" said Betty again.

"Yes," said he, "I think I've got it this time. I think it'll make a
hole in the wall, eh? Yes; it is good!"