Clementina, don’t you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You’re not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn’t got the work you mightn’t have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria.”
“He wasn’t from Peoria,” said Joe, slowly.
“Well, it doesn’t matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe—and—kiss me, Joe—and what made you ever suspect that I wasn’t giving music lessons to Clementina?”
“I didn’t,” said Joe, “until to-night. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.”
“And then you didn’t———”
“My purchaser from Peoria,” said Joe, “and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art—but you wouldn’t call it either painting or music.”
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems———”
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said—“just ‘When one loves.’”
[67]
