“Done!” said Hazard, who regarded this as at least one point worth gaining.  “You shall have the books.  I want to see Wharton’s triumph.”

“But if I do poetry for you,” continued Catherine, “you must do painting for me.”

“Very well!” said Hazard.  “What shall it be?”

“If I am Laura,” said Catherine, “I must have a Petrarch.  I want you to put him up here on the wall, looking at me, as he did in the church where he first saw me.”

“But what will Wharton and the committee say?” replied Hazard, startled at so monstrous a demand.

“I don’t believe Mr. Wharton will object,” answered Catherine.  “He will be flattered.  Don’t you see?  He is to be Petrarch.”

“Oh!” cried Hazard, with a stare.  “Now I understand.  You want me to paint Wharton as a scriptural character looking across to Miss Dudley’s Cecilia.”

“You are very slow!” said Catherine.  “I think you might have seen it without making me tell you.”

To a low-church evangelical parson this idea might have seemed inexpressibly shocking, but there was something in it which, after a moment’s reflection, rather pleased Hazard.  It was the sort of thing which the Florentines did, and there was hardly an early church in Italy about whose walls did not cling the colors of some such old union of art and friendship in the service of religion.  Catherine’s figure was already there.  Why not place Wharton’s by its side and honor the artist who had devoted so large a share of his life to the service of the church, with, it must be confessed, a very moderate share of worldly profit.  The longer Hazard thought of it, the less he saw to oppose.  His tastes were flattered by the idea of doing something with his own hand that should add to the character and meaning of the building.  His imagination was so pleased with the notion that at last he gave his consent:—­“Very well, Miss Brooke!  I will draw a figure for this next vacant space, and carry it as far as I know how.  If Wharton objects he can efface it.  But Miss Dudley will have to finish it for me, for I can’t paint, and Wharton would certainly stop me if I tried.”

Although this pretty bargain which seemed so fair, really threw on Esther the whole burden of writing sonnets and painting portraits for the amusement of Catherine and Mr. Hazard, Catherine begged so hard that she at last consented to do her best, and her consent so much delighted Hazard that he instantly searched his books for a model to work from, and as soon as he found one to answer his purpose, he began with Esther’s crayons to draw the cartoon of a large figure which was to preserve under the character of St. Luke the memory of Wharton’s features.  When Wharton came next to inspect Esther’s work, he was told that Mr. Hazard wished to try his hand on designing a figure for the vacant space, and he criticised and corrected it as freely as the rest.  For such a task Hazard was almost as competent as Wharton, from the moment the idea was once given, and in this dark corner it mattered little whether a conventional saint were more or less correct.