Rose MacLeod

								

his gift that made his work seem play,--not Osmond's fostering. But now,
coming home to more triumphs, Peter seemed to have forgotten the goal.
He found Osmond one morning resting under the apple tree, his chosen
shade. Peter strode up to the spot moodily, angrily even, his
picturesque youth well set off by the ease of his clothes. Osmond
watched him coming and approved of him without condition, because he saw
in him so many kinds of mastery. Peter gave him a nod, and threw himself
and his hat on the grass, at wide interval. He quoted some Latin to the
effect that Osmond was enjoying the ease of his dignified state.
"I've been up and at it since light," said Osmond, smiling at him. "You
don't know when sun-up is."
Peter rolled over and studied the grass.
"Are you coming up to see Rose?" he asked presently.
Osmond could not tell him Rose had been to see him.
"I might," he said, remembering her requisition.
"Come soon. Maybe you could put an oar in. She needs help, poor girl!"
"Help to Electra's favor?"
Peter nodded into the grass.
"You could do it better than I. You can do everything better. You
mustn't forget, Pete, that you're the Fortunate Youth."
There was something wistful in his tone. It stirred in Peter old
loyalties, old responses, and he immediately wondered what Osmond wanted
of him that was not expressed. Osmond had made no emotional demands upon
him, as to his profession, but Peter always had a sense that his brother
was sitting by, watching the boiling of the pot. This was a cheerful
companionship when the pot was active; not now, as it cooled. He threw
out a commonplace at random, from his uneasy consciousness.
"Art isn't the biggest thing, old boy."
"What is?"
Now Peter rolled over again, and regarded him with glowing eyes. To
Osmond, who was beginning to know his temperament better than he had
known it in all the years of the lad's journey upon an upward track,
that glance told of remembered phrases and a dominating personality that
had made the phrases stick.
"It's to give one man who works with his hands fresher air to breathe,
fewer hours' work, a better bed."
"You're an artist, Pete. Don't forget that."
"I don't. But it isn't the biggest thing."
"If you should paint a picture for that workingman to look at while he
says his prayers? what then?"
"You don't understand, Osmond," said the boy. "Labor! Labor is the
question of the day."
Osmond looked over at a field of seedlings where five men with bent
backs were weeding and where he himself had been bending until now. He
smiled a little.
"I understand work, boy," he said gently. "Only I can't make hot
distinctions. The workingman is as sacred to me as you are, and you are
as sacred as the workingman."
Peter was making little nosegays of grass and weeds, and laying them in
methodical rows.
"I can't paint, Osmond," he said abruptly. "These things are just