Don't Pick Me

CHAPTER X

With Bobs and the Chatfields away, and his uptown friends believing him to be off on a cruise, Jerry settled himself to long-neglected work, but nothing went well. He was out of work habits, he missed his intimates, he descended into the depths of discouragement and despair.

It was on a day of gloom within and gloom without that he set every canvas in the studio in a row before him. He went slowly from one to another and studied them all. Into this funereal stock-taking Jane entered. The deep distress on his face stopped her.

"What's the matter, Mr. Paxton?"

"Jane Judd, why do you suppose I ever thought I could paint?"

"Has anything happened?"

"These have happened! Look at this collection of wax-works! Bad drawing, no style, paint put on with a squirt gun."

"There is nothing like taking a good square look at what you have been doing, to make you mend your ways," she said, but he was not listening. He was enjoying his despair.

"I'll smash the whole lot of them. I never want to see them again!" He struck a wet brush across the nearest one, but Jane seized his arm.

"Don't do that."

"I can't live in the room with them."

"All right. Send them up to the storage room."

She began to move them off and stack them against the door. Jerry threw himself down on the couch, moodily. He scarcely noticed when the janitor, answering Jane's summons, carried them all off to the top floor.

"Now you've got a clean slate you can begin again," Jane said, and went about her work.

"I shall give it up. I'll never paint again."

She made no comment, but she smiled to herself. She knew "her children," as she called them.

"Can't you stop fussing around, and come and talk to me?"

"I have work to do."

He came to the door of the bedroom.

"What work?"

"I'm going to clean this room."

"Why do you bother with us, Jane Judd?" he inquired.

"I have to make my living."

"But you can do anything."

"Go away, now, I'm going to make a dust," she smilingly suggested.

He obeyed, but she heard him walking the studio, up and down. Presently he came to the door again.

"Couldn't you find something to do in the studio? I'm so desperately lonesome to-day."

Her own heart had prompted that phrase too often to let her smile at it.

"All right, in a few minutes. I'll find some mending to do."

After a while she came into the studio, and sat down by the big window, her sewing basket beside her. Jerry watched her quiet directness of movement. He noted the straight line of her back, the bend of her dark head outlined against the gray sheets of rain outside. Her sombre gown was relieved by a splash of red, gold, and blue Chinese embroidery, which she was mending.

"I'm always wondering lately, what you are thinking about, Jane Judd," he said.

"At this moment, I am thinking that it was careless to let this beautiful thing be torn."