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Miss Snell, however, supplied all details. It seemed Miss Price was sharing Miss Snell's studio, having been sent over by the Lynxville, Massachusetts, Sumner Prize Fund, for which she had successfully competed, and which provided a meagre allowance for two years' study abroad.
The Painter had sent nothing, being completely absorbed in finishing Cora's portrait, to the utter exclusion of everything else. Cora did the exhibitions faithfully. It was one of the duties she owed to the Lynxville fund, and which she diligently carried out.
As far as he could judge from what she showed him, she was hopelessly without talent, and he could only wonder which of these remarkably bad studies had won for her the Lynxville Sumner Prize Fund. He tried to give her some advice, and was thanked when she put her things away.
She made the Painter feel uncomfortable, she looked so knowing, and he became loud in his advice to send Cora home at once. "Pack her off," he cried. "She is wasting time and money by staying. She never had a particle of talent, and the sooner she goes back to Lynxville the better." Miss Snell shrank from his vehemence, and wished she had not insisted upon coming to consult him.
It was quite evident from her behavior that Miss Price was impressed with her own importance as the beneficiary of the Lynxville Prize Fund, and would require the greatest deference from her acquaintances in consequence. "Here, Cora, try this," said Miss Snell, planting a small three-legged stool on a rickety model-stand. "Might I make a suggestion?" said the Painter, coolly.
On the strength of a remittance from the prize fund, and in honor of the season, she discarded the sailor hat for a vivid ready-made creation smacking strongly of the Bon Marché. The weather was warm, and Cora wore mitts, which the Painter thought unpardonable in a city where gloves are particularly cheap. The mitts were probably fashionable in Lynxville, Massachusetts.
Miss Snell, with eyes red and tearful, stood on his door-mat when he answered the tap. "Poor dear Cora," she said, had received a notice from the Lynxville committee that they did not consider her work sufficiently promising to continue the fund another year. "She will have to go home," sobbed Miss Snell, but said: "I am forced to admit that Cora has wasted a good deal of time this summer.
He was not the first by any means; other people had been in love with her in Lynxville, Massachusetts, and she confided the details of several of these love-affairs to Miss Snell's sympathetic ears during the evening. Meanwhile, the Painter did nothing, and a fresh canvas stood on his easel when the girls arrived for breakfast on Sunday morning.
There he caught sight of her with a gay party who were about to embark on one of the little steamers that ply up and down the river. He shook his fist at her from the quay where he stood, and watched her and her party step into the boat from the pier. "She thinks little enough of the Lynxville Prize Fund when she wants an outing," he said to himself, scornfully.
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