"Shall you send it--I mean me--to the Academy?" I asked by-and-by.
"Depends on how it pans out," grunted Wilkinson, leaving the clay, twirling
the movable throne round, and taking a frowning survey of me in various
aspects. "I might send it in with Popplewell's bust, as a sort of
make-weight."
"As a sort of make-weight!" I echoed indignantly; and then, more calmly,
"Popplewell's finished, isn't he?"
"Yes--gone to be cast; and then comes the marble."
"Oh, Popplewell's to be done in marble, is he? What shall _I_ be done in?"
Wilkinson was taking an upward view of my features now, with a look of
extreme distaste on his countenance.
"You? Oh, if I decide to finish you, it'll be just the clay-burnt
terra-cotta, you know. Tut, tut, tut!"
"Why tut, tut, tut?" I asked.
"No offence, old chap, but you _have_ such queer facial bones;" and as he
turned back to his modelling I heard him mutter: "You never really know
what people are like till they sit to you."
Again I felt a bit hurt, and this time I indulged a retort. "Wonder if
you'll get Popplewell into the Academy. You've never had anything in yet,
have you?"
"We sculptors are so vilely handicapped by the wretched amount of space the
Academy people give us!" said Wilkinson angrily. "Still, I've great hopes
this time. Not only is my work improved, but it's a popular
subject--Popplewell, the novelist. There--that'll do for to-day. I've got
the construction all right," looking resentfully from the clay head to
mine, "though no one would believe it who hadn't your head here to compare
it with."
"Why, what's the matter with my head?" I asked irritably as I got gingerly
off the movable throne. "And, anyhow, I didn't ask to be modelled. You made
me sit here--I didn't want to do it."
"Oh, people make practice for one, whatever they're like."
"Good-bye," I said stiffly.
At the second sitting I tried to make allowances for the artistic
temperament when Wilkinson prowled round me with a look of something like
horror on his face, assaulted my features with compasses, and turned away
gibbering. I even kept calm when informed that one of my eyes was
considerably larger and wider open than the other and that I had "no
drawing" in my face. "No offence, old chap," added my former friend with a
grin. "You must remember it's the artist-eye that's responsible for these
cursory reflections."
"I wonder," I remarked musingly, "whether the artist-eye is a feature that
occasionally gets blacked by an indignant sitter."
At the third and fourth sittings more bitter so-called truths were handed
out to me, and he was down on my "construction" like a hundred of bricks.
"_That_'s a normal one," here he indicated a skull on a shelf; "_his_ bones
are all right. But if yours were stripped of the flesh----"
"I shan't be sorry when these sittings are over," I said; then, as I caught
a side view of the clay head, "I _say_! Am I as frightful as that?"
"As frightful as that!" snorted Wilkinson; "why, I've _flattered_ you, if
anything. People never know what they're like. There's such a lot of rotten
vanity knocking about."
When the last sitting was over my wrongs found voice.
"When I first sat to you," I said in a tense tone, "I was comparatively
happy; my self-esteem was in a healthy state; I felt that I was
well-looking at my best, even good-looking. I go from you to-day a broken
man, my confidence shaken, my manners spoiled by the consciousness that my
construction is wrong, that there is 'no drawing' in my face, and that
neither my eyes nor my nostrils are a pair; and, not content with this, you
have darkened my remote future by implying that when it is time for me to
be merely a skull I shall be an absurd one. May Heaven forgive you,
Wilkinson--_I_ never can!"
For some weeks we stood apart, "like cliffs that had been rent asunder,"
and then one day Wilkinson came up and thumped me on the back. "It's always
the unexpected that happens, old thing," he said. "Popplewell's bust was
rejected at once, but yours----"
"Am I _in_?" In my excitement I forgot my wrongs.
"No, not _in_; but you were a _doubtful_. Only think--first doubtful I've
ever had! To have a doubtful sculpture is as good as having two or three
paintings on the line. You can't be such a bad subject after all. I'll have
another touch at you, and next year see if you're not in! Come and have
some lunch."
* * * * *
[Illustration: CANDIDATE FOR MEDICAL DEGREE BEING EXAMINED IN THE SUBJECT
OF "BEDSIDE MANNER."]
* * * * *
"Notable things are done around a table. Corporations are formed...."
_Westminster Teacher._
The beginnings of them, anyway.
* * * * *
[Illustration: AFTER TEN YEARS.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE GREAT EAST AFRICAN PROTECTOR.
"Come under de ole umbrella,
Come along, piccaninnies, do;
Hark to Uncle LULU a-callin',
Room for all ob you!"--_Coon Song._
(Mr. HARCOURT.)]
* * * * *