—unobtrusively assisted by Tom and myself—can take her firmly and sympathetically in hand and educate her on her weak points."
"Oh, great goodness!" exclaimed the lady, aghast; "spare us, Flip! I know a great deal more about Marianna's weak points than you do, or are ever likely to. Send her to school, or to Paris, or to Rome, if you like, but remember that if you have got a heart I have got nerves."
"Not a bit of good," said Philip inexorably. "You know perfectly well that she could not yet mix with educated people who were strangers. This is probably the one chance of her lifetime also. If she leaves you she is extinguished. You hold the balance of her destiny whether you like it or not."
"I don't like it," she declared. "I am frightfully good-natured, I know, but I do think that it is expecting too much. I once knew a sort of amateur lady artist, and one used to meet droves of long hairy things there who talked about nothing but 'wash,' and 'tone,' and 'value,' and seemed more or less deficient in all three. Why can't Marianna sell her drawings if they are so wonderful and then make a nice home for her father and mother and disappear from our immediate horizon in a burst of splendour?"
"Just because she could not do it," he replied; "any more than you could engineer a 'corner' in Peruvian bark, for instance. Then she ought to study hard for at least two years before she 'comes out,' so to speak. She has had no more experience than a door-knocker. Everything she draws has passed down Cement Street. Now she needs taking out to see other kinds of things."
"I think it would be simpler to adopt her straight off," said Phœbe scornfully.
