“If you are pleased, it’s all I care about, Uncle Jethro,” she answered, and then, her face suddenly flushing, “You must promise me on your honor that nobody in Coniston shall know about it, ’Mr. Painter-man’.”

After this she always called him “Mr. Painter-man,”—­when she was pleased with him.

So the cardinal cloth was come to its usefulness at last.  It was inevitable that Sukey Kittredge, the village seamstress, should be taken into confidence.  It was no small thing to take Sukey into confidence, for she was the legitimate successor in more ways than one of Speedy Bates, and much of Cynthia and the artist’s ingenuity was spent upon devising a form of oath which would hold Sukey silent.  Sukey, however, got no small consolation from the sense of the greatness of the trust confided in her, and of the uproar she could make in Coniston if she chose.  The painter, to do him justice, was the real dressmaker, and did everything except cut the cloth and sew it together.  He sent to friends of his in the city for certain paste jewels and ornaments, and one day Cynthia stood in the old tannery shed—­hastily transformed into a studio—­before a variously moved audience.  Sukey, having adjusted the last pin, became hysterical over her handiwork, Millicent Skinner stared openmouthed, words having failed her for once, and Jethro thrust his hands in his pockets in a quiet ecstasy of approbation.

“A-always had a notion that cloth’d set you off, Cynthy,” said he, “er—­next time I go to the state capital you come along—­g-guess it’ll surprise ’em some.”

“I guess it would, Uncle Jethro,” said Cynthia, laughing.

Jethro postponed two political trips of no small importance to be present at the painting of that picture, and he would sit silently by the hour in a corner of the shed watching every stroke of the brush.  Never stood Doge’s daughter in her jewels and seed pearls amidst stranger surroundings,—­the beam, and the centre post around which the old white horse had toiled in times gone by, and all the piled-up, disused machinery of forgotten days.  And never was Venetian lady more unconscious of her environment than Cynthia.

The portrait was of the head and shoulders alone, and when he had given it the last touch, the painter knew that, for once in his life, he had done a good thing.  Never before; perhaps, had the fire of such inspiration been given him.  Jethro, who expressed himself in terms (for him) of great enthusiasm, was for going to Boston immediately to purchase a frame commensurate with the importance of such a work of art, but the artist had his own views on that subject and sent to New York for this also.

The day after the completion of the picture a rugged figure in rawhide boots and coonskin cap approached Chester Perkins’s house, knocked at the door, and inquired for the “Painter-man.”  It was Jethro.  The “Painter-man” forthwith went out into the rain behind the shed, where a somewhat curious colloquy took place.