Meanwhile Iver and Jonas had been in conversation. The latter had been somewhat contemptuous about the profession of an artist, and was not a little astonished when he heard the prices realized by pictures. Iver told the Broom-Squire that he intended making some paintings of the Punch-Bowl, and that he had a mind to draw Kink's farm.

In that case, said Bideabout, a percentage of the money such a picture fetched would be due to him. He didn't see that anyone had a right to take a portrait of his house and not pay him for it. If Iver were content to draw his house, he must, on no account, include that of the Rocliffes, for there was a mortgage on that, and there might be trouble with the lawyers.

Mrs. Verstage proposed to Bideabout that she should go with him to his sister's house, and he consented.

"Look here, Matabel," said he, "there is Mister Iver thinks he can make a pictur' of the spring, if you'll get a pitcher and stand by it. I dare say if it sells, he'll not forget us."

"I wish I could take Mehetabel and her pitcher off your hands, and not merely the portrait of both," laughed Iver, to cover the confusion of the girl, who reddened with annoyance at the grasping meanness of Jonas.

When Iver was alone with her, as they were on their way to the spring, he said, "Come, this will not do at all. For the first time we are free to chat together, as in the old times when we were inseparable friends. Why are you shy now, Matabel?"

"You must be glad to be home again with the dear father and mother," she said.

"Yes, but I miss you; and I had so reckoned on finding you there."

"You will remain at the Ship now," urged she.

"I don't know that. I have my profession. I have leisure during part of the summer and fall, making studies for pictures--but I take pupils; they pay."

"You must consider the old folk."

"I do. I will visit them occasionally. But art is a mistress, and an imperious one. When one is married one is no longer independent."

"You are married?" asked Mehetabel, with a flush in her cheeks.

"Yes, to my art."

"Oh! to paints and brushes! Tell me true, Iver! Has no girl won your heart whilst you have been from home?"

"I have found many to admire, but my heart is free. I have had no time to think of girls' faces--save as studies. Art is a mistress as jealous as she is exacting."

Mehetabel drew a long breath. There went up a flash of light in her mind, for which she did not attempt to account. "You are free--that is famous, and can take Polly Colpus."

Then she laughed, and Iver laughed.

They laughed long and merrily together.

"This is too much," exclaimed Iver. "At home father is at me to exchange the mahl-stick for an ox-goad, and mother wearies me with laudation of Polly Colpus. I shall revolt and run away, as I did not expect you to lend a hand with Polly."

"You must not run away," said Mehetabel, earnestly. "Iver! I was all those years at the Ship, with mother, after you went, and I have seen how her heart has ached for you. She is growing old.

Let her have consolation during the years that remain for the sorrow of those that are past."

"I cannot take to farming, nor turn publican, and I will not have Polly Colpus."

"Here is the spring," said Mehetabel.

She set the pitcher beside the water, leaned back in the hedge, musing, with her finger to her chin, her eyes on the ground, and her feet crossed.

"Stand as you are. That is perfect. Do not stir. I will make a pencil sketch."

The spring gushed from under a bank, in a clear and copious jet.

It had washed away the sand, and had buried itself in a nook among ferns and moss. On the top of the bank was a rude shed, open at the side, with a cart at rest in it. Wild parsnips in full flower nodded before the water.

"I could desire nothing better," said Iver, "and that pale blue skirt of yours, the white stockings, the red kerchief round your head--in color as in arrangement everything is admirable."

"You have not your paints with you."

"I will come another day and bring them. Now I will only sketch in the outline."

Presently Iver laughed. "Matabel! If I took Polly she would be of no use to me whatever, not even as a model."

Presently the Broom-Squire returned with Mrs. Verstage, and looked over the shoulder of the artist.

"Not done much," he said.

"I shall have to come again and yet again, to put in the color,"

said Iver.

"Come when and as often as you like," said Bideabout. Neither of the men noticed the shrinking that affected the entire frame of Mehetabel, as Jonas said these words, but it was observed by Mrs.

Verstage, and a shade of anxiety swept over her face.

CHAPTER XVI.

AGAIN-IVER.

A few days after this first visit, Iver was again at the Kinks'

farm.

The weather was fine, and he protested that he must take advantage of it to proceed with his picture.

Mehetabel was reluctant to stand. She made excuses that were at once put aside.

"If you manage to sell pictures of our place," said Bideabout, "our Punch-Bowl may get a name, and folk come here picnicking from Godalming and Guildford and Portsmouth; and I'll put up a board with Refreshments--Moderate, over the door, and Matabel shall make tea or sell cake, and pick up a trifle towards; housekeeping."

A month was elapsed since Mehetabel's marriage, the month of honey to most--one of empty comb without sweetness to her. She had drawn no nearer to her husband than before. They had no interests, no tastes in common. They saw all objects through a different medium.

It was not a matter of concern to Mehetabel that she was left much alone by Jonas, and that her sister-in-law and the rest of the squatters treated her as an interloper.

As a child, at the Ship, without associates of her own age, after Iver's departure, she had lived much to herself, and now her soul craved for solitude. And yet, when she was alone the thoughts of her heart troubled her.

Jonas was attached, in his fashion, to his beautiful wife; he joked, and was effusive in his expressions of affection. But she did not respond to his jokes, and his demonstrations of affection repelled her. Jonas was too dull, or vain, to perceive this, and he attributed her coldness to modesty, real or affected, probably the latter.

Mehetabel shrank from looking full in the face, the thought that she must spend the rest of her life with this man. She was well aware that she could not love him, could hardly bring herself to like him, the utmost she could hope was that she might arrive at enduring him.