She wore a
far-away look as though her thoughts were following some fancy which
had appealed to her. She did not deign to take me into her confidence
at the moment, but a fortnight later I happened to come upon her in
close confabulation with a very clever, rising, local artist, over this
same portrait of my great-grandfather Plunkett.
"Fred," she said, nonchalantly, "Mr. Binkey thinks he can do something
to this which will improve it."
"I shouldn't suppose that it was easy to improve upon nature," I
remarked, oracularly.
Josephine blushed a little, but she replied, with sturdy decision, "Oh,
but he never could have looked like that. His eyes must have been
alike, Fred. Mustn't they, Mr. Binkey?"
"I should imagine," said our rising local artist, with a meditative
squint at the picture, "that the fault was in the technique rather than
in the subject-matter of the portrait."
"Precisely," said Josephine, triumphantly. "Besides, Mr. Binkey says
it needs varnishing."
What can one say in the teeth of professional authority? When
great-grandfather and great-grandmother Plunkett came back to us at the
end of a month, they were newly varnished and in bright, tasteful
frames, and no one would ever have detected that the old gentleman's
eyes did not resemble each other closely.
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