First M.-of-F.P. I think I do—­yes, those orange spots in the green.  They’re meant for Marigolds, but there aren’t very many of them, are there?  And why should they all be sitting on the grass like that?  Enough to give them their deaths of cold!

Second M.-of-F.P. I expect they’ve been bathing.

First M.-of-F.P. They couldn’t all bathe in that fountain, and then what do you make of their bringing out their violins?

    [The other M.-of-F.  Person making nothing of it, they pass
    on.

An Irritable Philistine.  Nonsense, Sir, you can’t admire them, don’t tell me!  Do you mean to say you ever saw all those blues, and greens, and yellows, in Nature, Sir?

His Companion.  I mean to say that that is how Nature appears to an eye trained to see things in a true and not a merely conventional light.

The I.P..  Then all I can say is, that if things ever appeared to me as unconventionally as all that, I should go straight home and take a couple of liver pills, Sir.  I should!

First Frivolous Old Lady.  Here’s another of them, my dear.  It’s no use, we’ve got to admire it, this is the kind of thing you and I must be educated up to in our old age!

Second F.O.L. It makes me feel as if I was on board a yacht, that’s all I know—­just look at the perspective in that room, all slanted up!

First F.O.L. That’s your ignorance, my dear, it’s quite the right perspective for a Pastel, it’s our rooms that are all wrong—­not these clever young gentlemen.

    [They go about chuckling and poking old ladylike fun at all
    the more eccentric Pastels, and continue to enjoy themselves
    immensely.

First M.-of-F.P. (they have come to a Pastel depicting a young woman seated on the Crescent Moon, nursing an infant).  H’m—­very peculiar. I never saw Diana represented with a baby before—­did you?

Second M.-of-F.P. No—­(hopefully)—­but perhaps it’s intended for somebody else.  But it’s not the place I should choose to nurse an infant in.  It doesn’t look safe, and it can’t be very comfortable.

    [They go on into a smaller room, and come upon a sketch of a
    small child, with an immense red mouth, and no visible nose,
    eyes, or legs.

First M.-of-F.P. “Little Girl in Black”—­what a very plain child, to be sure!

Second M.-of-F.P. What there is of it; but it looks to me as if the artist had spent so much time over the black that he forgot to put in the little girl—­he’s got her mouth, though.

First M.-of-F.P..  Well, if it was my child, I should insist upon having the poor little thing more finished than that—­even if I had to pay extra for it.