Read Katherine Keenum for Free Online Page B

were—”
    Jeanette’s heart sank. Mrs. Palmer signaled a retreat with two tiptoeing fingers, but just then Mr. Moyer came to the door. A tall, loose-jointed young man in his twenties, with a quick, intelligent eye, he might have been an ambitious country law clerk if he had worn a coat instead of a painter’s smock. He looked surprised to find three ladies at his door, but his face lit up in welcoming mirth for Effie. “Come in,” he said, standing back. When Effie failed to initiate introductions, he held out a hand to Mrs. Palmer. “My name is Frank Moyer.”
    “Mrs. Joseph Palmer, Mr. Moyer; and this is my daughter, Jeanette. Please forgive this uninvited intrusion.”
    “Oh, not at all. Always open for business.”
    “Cousin Effie said we might see your studio,” said Jeanette.
    “By all means! Isn’t it grand?” he said, waving his arm to encompass the room. “It really belongs to Payne Hedley, but it’s all mine until June!”
    It
was
grand, Jeanette thought, as big as the studio shared by all of Professor van Ingen’s students at once and lit by broad windows that rose from shoulder height to the ceiling. Framed pictures crowded the paneled walls; unframed canvases on stretchers leaned against the wainscoting. The largest picture in the room was some seven feet high by nine feet wide, a panoramic landscape of jungly forest with a parrot and orchids in the foreground and mountains in the distance against a glimpse of luminous golden sky.
    “Is this yours, Mr. Moyer?” asked Mrs. Palmer.
    “Good lord, no, that’s the
meister
’s. But thank you, ma’am, for thinking it might be. He’s off in South America now, making studies for a companion piece, and it was my great good luck to be allowed to sublet.”
    “He’s a follower of Mr. Church?” asked Jeanette, studying the handling of light on the distant mountains.
    “Bull’s-eye!” said Mr. Moyer, looking at her with more interest.
    “And do you also paint landscapes?”
    “Yes and no. In the afternoons, I fill in the backgrounds for Mr. Hedley’s parlor-sized variations on jungle birds and flowers.” He turned around a few of the canvases propped against the wall. They were all about eighteen by twenty-four inches, and all showed some tropical bird or other against a spray of lush blossom. “
Beaks and bouquets to pay the rent
, he calls them. Putting in twigs and sprigs earns me a share of the space.”
    “You mean he sells pictures that aren’t all his own?” asked Effie, shocked.
    “Everybody from Rembrandt on down has had workshop assistants!” said Jeanette, hoping that Mr. Moyer did not think he had been accused of shady practices.
    “The genius does the interesting parts the patron pays for,” explained Mr. Moyer, not in the least offended, “and we groveling journeymen work in his style to complete the background. But come take a look at this. Every stroke mine, I promise.”
    The picture on his easel showed a bare-legged young woman in a farm dress and apron, sitting on a split-rail fence as she gazed straight at the viewer.
    “You are lucky in your model, Mr. Moyer. She has a lovely face,” said Mrs. Palmer.
    “Well,
I
think so,” said Mr. Moyer. “She’s my fiancée, and you’d never guess from my turning her into a frontier lass that she’s just back from Europe. Wait! What am I thinking? Come with me; Susan may be in the gallery right now. There’s a group of them hanging a show of works on paper to open in a few days.”
    “We saw them!” exclaimed Jeanette.
    “Did you? Susan is deep into pastels these days; I hope some of hers are up already for admiration.”
    Back in the main lobby, he led them to a young woman who was hanging a pastel portrait of a little girl, matted and framed, on a line with several others.
    “Susan, here are visitors I want you to meet,” said Mr. Moyer. “Mrs. Palmer, may I present Miss Susan Whitmore, lately returned from Paris, France, soon to be the toast of New York City,