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The conviction of having blundered was never more present to her than when, on this particular afternoon, the guests invited by Mr. Popple to view her portrait began to assemble before it. Some of the principal figures of Undine's group had rallied for the occasion, and almost all were in exasperating enjoyment of the privileges for which she pined.
It was about four o'clock, and Lincoln was tired. His neck ached, his toes were swollen, and his tongue called for a drink of water. He got off the plow, after turning the horses' heads to the faint western breeze, and took a seat on the fence in the shade of a small popple tree on which a king-bird had a nest.
"Oh, I don't know unless it's because he makes such nice popple whistles!" and as if the argument were conclusive, Jenny unrolled her pantalet, and tried to wipe some of the mud from her dress, at the same time glancing towards her sister, who at some little distance was reclining against an old oak tree, and poring intently over "Fairy Tales for Children."
Hatch-Mallard has evidently never read Popple's County History," said Mrs. Dole icily, "or she would know that the Cullumpton ghost has a wealth of evidence behind it " "Oh, Popple!" exclaimed Mrs. Hatch-Mallard scornfully; "any rubbishy old story is good enough for him. Popple, indeed! Now my uncle's ghost was seen by a Rural Dean, who was also a Justice of the Peace.
Popple's first meeting with Miss Undine Spragg of Apex, even the symbolic chafing-dish was nowhere visible in his studio; the only evidence of its recent activity being the full-length portrait of Mrs. Ralph Marvell, who, from her lofty easel and her heavily garlanded frame, faced the doorway with the air of having been invited to "receive" for Mr. Popple.
The whole basic conception of work bored him. The sticks of wood were personal enemies to which he gave insulting names. He had always admired the hard bark and metallic resonance of the ironwood, but he hated the poplar "popple" it is called in Joralemon, Minnesota. Poplar becomes dry and dusty, and the bark turns to a monstrously mottled and evil greenish-white.
She had a nest there. I went to see her every day till she became uneasy about it, and let me know I was no longer welcome." "Yonder," he continued, indicating a range of wooded hills against the wintry sky, "is the classic region of 'Popple Town Hill, and over there is 'Pang Yang."
As he reached a little popple tree by The roadside, he stopped, removed his broad-brimmed hat, put his elbows on The fence, and looked hungrily upon The scene. The sky was deeply blue, with only here and there a huge, heavy, slow-moving, massive, sharply outlined cloud sailing like a berg of ice in a shoreless sea of azure.
Spragg began reproachfully; but Mrs. Heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of thought. "What Popple? Claud Walsingham Popple the portrait painter?" "Yes I suppose so. He said he'd like to paint me. Mabel Lipscomb introduced him. I don't care if I never see him again," the girl said, bathed in angry pink. "Do you know him, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg enquired.
Popple, in fact, held that the personality of the artist should at all times be dissembled behind that of the man. It was his opinion that the essence of good-breeding lay in tossing off a picture as easily as you lit a cigarette.
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