He took no heed of a flourishing
potato crop, but waxed enthusiastic over a clump of yellow-flowering weed
that stood in a corner by a gateway, which was rather galling to the
owner of a really very well weeded farm; again, when he might have been
duly complimentary about a group of fat, black-faced lambs, that simply
cried aloud for admiration, he became eloquent over the foliage tints of
an oak copse on the hill opposite. But now he was being taken to inspect
the crowning pride and glory of Helsery; however grudging he might be in
his praises, however backward and niggardly with his congratulations, he
would have to see and acknowledge the many excellences of that
redoubtable animal. Some weeks ago, while on a business journey to
Taunton, Tom had been invited by his half-brother to visit a studio in
that town, where Laurence was exhibiting one of his pictures, a large
canvas representing a bull standing knee-deep in some marshy ground; it
had been good of its kind, no doubt, and Laurence had seemed inordinately
pleased with it; "the best thing I've done yet," he had said over and
over again, and Tom had generously agreed that it was fairly life-like.
Now, the man of pigments was going to be shown a real picture, a living
model of strength and comeliness, a thing to feast the eyes on, a picture
that exhibited new pose and action with every shifting minute, instead of
standing glued into one unvarying attitude between the four walls of a
frame.
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