Olive’s picture of Nancy was finished, and she announced the absolute impossibility of keeping it until Christmas, so it reached the Yellow House on Thanksgiving morning.  When it was unwrapped by Nancy and displayed for the first time to the family, Mother Carey’s lips parted, her eyes opened in wonder, but no words came for an instant, in the bewilderment of her mind.  Olive had written the title “Young April” under the picture.  Nancy stood on a bit of dandelion-dotted turf, a budding tree in the background, her arm flung over the neck of a Jersey calf.  The calf had sat for his portrait long before, but Nancy had been added since May.  Olive, by a clever inspiration, had turned Nancy’s face away and painted her with the April breeze blowing her hair across her cheek.  She was not good at painting features, her art was too crude, but somehow the real thing was there; and the likeness to Nancy, in figure, pose, and hair, was so unmistakable that her mother caught her breath.  As for the calf, he, at least, was distinctly in Olive’s line, and he was painted with a touch of genius.

“It is better of the calf than it is of you, Nancy,” said Gilbert critically.

“Isn’t Mr. Bossy lovely?” his sister responded amiably.  “Wouldn’t he put any professional beauty out of countenance?  I am proud to be painted beside him!  Do you like it, Muddy dear?”

“Like it?” she exclaimed, “it is wonderful!  It must be sent to Boston for criticism, and we must invent some way of persuading Mr. Lord to give Olive the best instruction to be had.  This picture is even better than anything she has done in the painted chamber.  I shouldn’t wonder a bit, Nancy, if little Beulah were to be very proud of Olive in the years to come!”

Nancy was transported at her mother’s praise.  “I felt it, I knew it!  I always said Olive was a genius,” she cried, clapping her hands.  “Olive is ‘following the gleam’!  Can’t you feel the wind blowing my hair and dress?  Don’t you see that the calf is chewing his cud and is going to move in just a minute?  Olive’s animals are always just going to move!—­Oh, Muddy dear! when you see Olive nowadays, smiling and busy and happy, aren’t you glad you stretched your wings and took her under them with the rest of us?  And don’t you think you could make a ‘new beast’ out of Mr. Henry Lord, or is he too old a beast even for Mother Carey?”

XXVI

A ZOOLOGICAL FATHER

That was just what Mother Carey was wondering when Nancy spoke, and as the result of several hours’ reflection she went out for a walk just before dusk and made her way towards The Cedars with a package under her cloak.

She followed the long lane that led to the house, and knocked at the front door rather timidly.  In her own good time Mrs. Bangs answered the knock and admitted Mrs. Carey into the dreariest sitting room she had ever entered.