“Oh, _I’m_ all right,” replied a muffled voice, in a tone of the utmost despair.
“Well, come on down, or you’ll smother. What’s happened?”
“I’ll be down in a second,” and then through the fog Paul appeared slowly, descending the stairs carrying a square of canvas.
“Is it hurt?” asked Jane, fearfully. “Oh, Paul!”
“I don’t know. I can’t see it properly yet.” But his face showed that he expected the worst Neither of them spoke a word until they reached the garden again, where Aunt Gertrude pounced upon Jane.
“Oh, _child_, how you frightened me! Paul, are you quite sure everything’s all right? Oh, how did it start—was there really a _blaze_?”
“Just a little one—it’s all out—a few rags. I pitched ’em all out of the window. I’m—sorry, Aunt Gertrude.”
“What’s the matter? Is it ruined?” asked Carl. Jane said nothing, but stood looking first at her cousin’s face, and then at the smoke-begrimed and blistered canvas on which there was hardly a semblance of the picture that had been so nearly completed.
“Yes,” said Paul, with the calmness of despair, “it’s ruined. It’s ruined all right.”
No one knew what to say, and a silence followed, until Elise asked timidly if he didn’t have time to do another.
“In four days? This is the twenty-seventh. No, cousin, I couldn’t—and besides, even if I could, I haven’t anything to do it with. So I guess that’s all there is to that.” He tried to sound cheerful, and turning the picture against the wall of the house, announced that he was going back to the attic to see if everything was calm up there.
“Well, that’s pretty hard luck,” remarked Carl. “I daresay he’s more broken up than he lets on.”
Jane had begun to cry, hiding her face in Granny’s lap. Not even Paul could have been as cruelly disappointed as she.
“Oh, he _would_ have won something! I’m sure he would have!” she wept, disconsolately. “He said he didn’t think so, but he _did_, and I know he did.”
“Well, one way or the other, it’s his affair,” said Carl, “and I certainly don’t see why _you_ should be in such a stew over it.”
“It is my affair, too,” wailed Jane, and at this characteristic remark no one could help smiling.
“Come, Janey, darling, there’s no use in taking it so to heart,” said Mrs. Lambert, laying her hand softly on the curly head. “We are all dreadfully distressed about Paul, but he has taken his misfortune bravely, and after all he will have many more chances. Elise, isn’t that the bell in the bakeshop? Dear me, what can people think coming in to all that smoke. I wonder if it’s clearing out at all. Come now, Janey, cheer up.”