Читать книгу Jewel sowers. A novel онлайн

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“I found it first,” she whimpered.

“Here’s a seed—that’s all you’re worth,” he answered. “Now I go to find more,” said he, jumping up valiantly. “You bake bread and get me butter for when I return.”

“I come too!” she cried. “You eat the whole while I worky work.”

“Fool—toad—weasel—monkey! bake me the bread, or I your neck am breaking!”

And with that they disappeared from the page. Only the picture in its first stage remained visible.

“That’s not pretty at all,” said Rosalie.

“Few things are in real life,” he answered.

“But that was caricature.”

“Not in the way you think. It was caricature, I grant, but with a difference.”

“Yes. I don’t think the eating of salt with tomato could make a man really superior, do you?”

“No; but it was the fact that he discovered salt.”

“But he didn’t. He was as ignorant as she till the voices whispered it.”

“Nevertheless, he caught the first sound.”

“Yes, of course,” said Rosalie thoughtfully.

Here Mr. Barringcourt laughed.

“You do not appreciate its true absurdity,” he said; “but that, maybe, is scarcely necessary. Now, that picture, or series of pictures, was painted by a woman, and sent to the man who had sent her the first.”