But Lady Arthur was--or at least had
been--a woman of the world, and the idea of a penniless man allowing
himself to fall in love seriously with a penniless girl in actual
life could not find admission into her mind: if she had been writing
a ballad it would have been different; indeed, if you had only known
Lady Arthur through her poetry, you might have believed her to be a
very, romantic, sentimental, unworldly person, for she really was all
that--on paper.
Mr. Eildon was very frequently in the studio where Miss Adamson and
her pupil worked, and he was always ready to accompany them in their
excursions, and, Lady Arthur said, "really made himself very useful."
It has been said that John and Thomas both approved of her ladyship's
summer expeditions in search of the picturesque, or whatever else she
might take it into her head to look for; and when she issued orders
for a day among the hills in a certain month of August, which had been
a specially fine month in point of weather, every one was pleased.
But John and Thomas found it nearly as hard work climbing with the
luncheon-basket in the heat of the midsummer sun as it was when they
climbed to the same elevation in midwinter; only they did not slip
back so fast, nor did they feel that they were art and part in a
"daftlike" thing.
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