was also a more friendly and eager curiosity than Mrs. Pierce had shown: it had a certain warmth of human interest in it, too.
She was obviously very fond of Joel: her relation to him was that of an old-maid friend of the family, who is so intimate and close to all the family’s history that she is practically a part of it herself, and who feels for the children and all their lives and actions as much affection and interest as she could feel for her own blood. Now she turned to Joel, and began to talk to him about some decorative screens which he was painting for her: as one might expect, she knew all about decorative screens and their respective merits; she spoke of them with the exact authority, the assured conviction of the expert, she spoke her mind about them crisply, plainly, incisively, and Joel listened to her eagerly, his gaunt face lifted, turned towards her in an attitude of rapt attention and respect, while she was talking.
“The central one is excellent, Joel—really first-rate, the best one you’ve ever done—and decidedly the best of the lot. The one on the right is also good—not as good as the first, it swings off-balance in the foreground. I’ll show you what I mean tomorrow—but it is good, and will do.”
“What about the other one—the one on the left?” he whispered eagerly. “What did you think of that?”
“I think it’s very, very bad,” she said coolly and incisively. “I think you’ve fallen down on it, and that you’re going to have to do the whole thing over again.”
For a moment his gaunt face winced, but not with pain and disappointment, rather with swift, concerned interest, eager attentiveness: he hitched his long thin figure forward unconsciously, his large well-boned hands splayed out upon his knees, and he whispered eagerly:
“But why, Madge?… Tell me. Where do you think I’ve fallen down?”
“Well,” said Miss Telfair, “in the first place, Joel, you’ve lost out on your design—It falls all to pieces now, you’ve let the whole thing get away from you: you were trying to follow it out from the one in the middle and bring it to an end, but you didn’t know how to finish it—and so you put in that pavilion or summer-house or whatever it is—because you didn’t know what else to do.”
“Don’t you like that?” he whispered, smiling.
“I think it’s perfectly god-awful,” she answered quietly, “utterly meaningless—
