letter I am going to be the only one to sign it. He will have to write
his own letters, won’t he, father?”
“It looks as if he would have to.” Mr. Seymour laughed. “I know that Jo would like to get more than one a week through the winter. How about it, Jo?”
“You bet I would,” answered Jo, his eyes shining.
Ben was almost entirely interested in painting the animals. He was trying to draw them from his recollection of the leaping buck. He got the action very well, Mr. Seymour told him, but he would have to practice more on the outlines, so that the leaping figure would look more like a deer.
“When I saw that deer,” Ben explained excitedly, “I felt as if I were jumping in exactly the same way. That is why I am sure about how the lines should go.”
“With a little patience, Ben,” his father promised, “I feel certain that you will be able to draw.”
“And I shall be very famous?”
“I can’t promise that. The famous--but of course you don’t mean ‘famous’; you aren’t using the right word and I can’t have you saying it. You are trying to ask me whether you can do work that will satisfy yourself, and that no one can prophesy. You will have to work hard. Don’t think that you can be anything you wish by merely wishing it. And besides, some of the greatest painters have only made a bare living after studying and working all their lives long.”
“I don’t care if I don’t make any money,” said Ben stoutly, “if I can paint as much as I like.”
“Paint costs money,” said Mr. Seymour rather sadly. “And an artist has to feed himself and his family.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Ben,” Ann protested. “When Jo and I get our ranch started you can come and live with us--can’t he, Jo?”
“Sure he can,” Jo assented readily. “And he can paint all the time; there will be lots of animals out there, steers and horses. And we can live on potatoes and beans.”
Mr. Seymour seemed to think that this was very funny, for he laughed heartily.
“I’ll come to visit you once in a while,” said Helen. “But I am going to marry a millionaire and live on candy and nuts.”
“You’ll be glad to eat some of Jo’s beans, in that case,” said Ben quite positively. He once had known what it was to eat too much candy. “And if Jo lets me live there with him and with Ann, I’ll promise to do my full share of hoeing.”
“Father will come, too,” said Ann eagerly, “even though he will be the greatest painter in America by that time. When our ranch is paying, neither father nor mother nor Mr. Bailey will need to do any more work for money.”
“That’s a very kind promise,” said Mr. Seymour. “And I shall expect to enjoy visiting you. Helen can bring some of her candy and nuts, for they will make us a pleasant change from a steady diet of beans and potatoes.”
In the evenings Ben was tracing his deer drawings on a piece of shellacked cardboard which he planned to cut into stencils, so that he could stencil some new curtains for the Boston apartment, curtains with deer leaping all along the bottom.