She made the confession very prettily and simply, and, with quaint, childish earnestness, drew the sketchbook away close to her own side of the table. Miss Halcombe cut the knot of the little embarrassment forthwith, in her resolute, downright way.
“Good, bad, or indifferent,” she said, “the pupil’s sketches must pass through the fiery ordeal of the master’s judgment—and there’s an end of it. Suppose we take them with us in the carriage, Laura, and let Mr. Hartright see them, for the first time, under circumstances of perpetual jolting and interruption? If we can only confuse him all through the drive, between Nature as it is, when he looks up at the view, and Nature as it is not when he looks down again at our sketchbooks, we shall drive him into the last desperate refuge of paying us compliments, and shall slip through his professional fingers with our pet feathers of vanity all unruffled.”
“I hope Mr. Hartright will pay me no compliments,” said Miss Fairlie, as we all left the summerhouse.
“May I venture to inquire why you express that hope?” I asked.
“Because I shall believe all that you say to me,” she answered simply.
In those