She got her sketch-block and pencils, and began to draw; Fulkerson tilted himself forward and looked over her shoulder; he smiled outwardly; inwardly he was divided between admiration of Miss Woodburn’s arch beauty and appreciation of the skill which reproduced it; at the same time he was trying to remember whether March had authorized him to go so far as to ask for a sight of Colonel Woodburn’s manuscript.  He felt that he had trenched upon March’s province, and he framed one apology to the editor for bringing him the manuscript, and another to the author for bringing it back.

“Most Ah hold raght still like it was a photograph?” asked Miss Woodburn.  “Can Ah toak?”

“Talk all you want,” said Alma, squinting her eyes.  “And you needn’t be either adamantine, nor yet—­wooden.”

“Oh, ho’ very good of you!  Well, if Ah can toak—­go on, Mr. Fulkerson!”

“Me talk?  I can’t breathe till this thing is done!” sighed Fulkerson; at that point of his mental drama the Colonel was behaving rustily about the return of his manuscript, and he felt that he was looking his last on Miss Woodburn’s profile.

“Is she getting it raght?” asked the girl.

“I don’t know which is which,” said Fulkerson.

“Oh, Ah hope Ah shall!  Ah don’t want to go round feelin’ like a sheet of papah half the time.”

“You could rattle on, just the same,” suggested Alma.

“Oh, now!  Jost listen to that, Mr. Fulkerson.  Do you call that any way to toak to people?”

“You might know which you were by the color,” Fulkerson began, and then he broke off from the personal consideration with a business inspiration, and smacked himself on the knee, “We could print it in color!”

Mrs. Leighton gathered up her sewing and held it with both hands in her lap, while she came round, and looked critically at the sketch and the model over her glasses.  “It’s very good, Alma,” she said.

Colonel Woodburn remained restively on his side of the table.  “Of course, Mr. Fulkerson, you were jesting, sir, when you spoke of printing a sketch of my daughter.”

“Why, I don’t know—­If you object—?

“I do, sir—­decidedly,” said the Colonel.

“Then that settles it, of course,—­I only meant—­”

“Indeed it doesn’t!” cried the girl.  “Who’s to know who it’s from?  Ah’m jost set on havin’ it printed!  Ah’m going to appear as the head of Slavery—­in opposition to the head of Liberty.”

“There’ll be a revolution inside of forty-eight hours, and we’ll have the Colonel’s system going wherever a copy of ‘Every Other Week’ circulates,” said Fulkerson.

“This sketch belongs to me,” Alma interposed.  “I’m not going to let it be printed.”

“Oh, mah goodness!” said Miss Woodburn, laughing good-humoredly.  “That’s becose you were brought up to hate slavery.”

“I should like Mr. Beaton to see it,” said Mrs. Leighton, in a sort of absent tone.  She added, to Fulkerson:  “I rather expected he might be in to-night.”