I think she would not agree to what I said about her work.  She “had began to learn how to find life in every-day work, just as she saw a new sun rise every day.”  But she did agree that we would work together, without asking where our sunshine came from, or our inspiration.

So it was settled.  And her work was around and within the old “natural-colored” house, whose walls by this time were half-embowered in vines.  There was gay sunshine without and within.  And the lichen was yellow that grew on the deeply sloping roof, and we liked to plant hollyhocks and sunflowers by the side of the quaint old building, while scarlet honeysuckles and trumpet-flowers and gay convolvuli gladdened the front porch.

There was but one question that was left to be disputed between us.  Margaret still believed I was an artist, all-undeveloped.

“Those sunbeams”—­

“I had nothing to do with them.  They married golden threads that seemed kindred to them.”

“It is not true.  Sunbeams cannot exist without the sun.  Your magnetic power, perhaps, attracted the true sunbeam, and you recreated others.”

She fancies, if I would only devote myself to Art, I might become an American Murillo, and put a Madonna upon canvas.

But before we carried the new sunshine into the old house, I had been summoned again by Mr. Clarkson.  Another wonderful piece of carpeting had gone out from the works, discovered by our agent before it had left our warehouse.  It was the Water-Lily pattern,—­lilies sitting among green leaves with sunshine playing in and out and among them.  So dazzling it seemed, that it shed a light all round the darkened walls of the warehouse.  It was priceless, he thought, a perfect unique.  Better, almost, that never such a pattern should appear again.  It ought to remain the only one in the world.

And it did so remain.  The rival establishment built a new chimney to their mill, which shut out completely all sunshine or hope of sunshine from our narrow windows.  This was accomplished before the next May, and I showed Mr. Clarkson how utterly impossible it was for the most determined sunbeam ever to mingle itself with our most inviting fabrics.  Mr. Clarkson pondered a long time.  We might build our establishment a story higher; we might attempt to move it.  But here were solid changes, and the hopes were uncertain.  Affairs were going on well, and the reputation of the mills was at its height.  And the carpets of sunshine were never repeated.

* * * * *

THE TWO TONGUES.