He
looked at the swiftly done, vivid bit of work. "_This_ is what I
want for my grandson; it is his grandfather as nature made him. It
is as true and as homely as life itself." And he looked at Peter
respectfully, so that that young man blushed to his ears. And that
is how and when Peter Champneys painted his first ordered picture,
signed with the Red Admiral; and how he won the faithful friendship
of a crusty Englishman. It was a very real friendship. His lordship
had what he himself called a country heart, and as Peter Champneys
had the same sort, and neither man outraged the other by too much
talk, they got along astonishingly well.
"He's deucedly intelligent," his lordship explained, with quiet
enthusiasm. "We'll tramp for miles, and I give you my word that for
an hour on end he won't say three words!"
Hemingway, to whom this confidence was given, chuckled. It amused
him to watch his wife's wild goose putting on native swan feathers.
Yet it pleased him, for he knew the boy appealed to her romantic as
well as to her maternal instinct.
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