"Righto! Come about yourself? How's your appetite?" said the doctor, in one breath, as he disappeared from the window and readdressed himself to business.
* * * * *
And in the afternoon we duly did this brewing.
"One brews in Baffin's studio," explained the doctor, with a slight yawn, as he led me through the kitchen door into his little yard, all bright with tulips. "Baffin's studio is really our washhouse, you know."
"And who is Baffin?" I demanded.
"One of the Leicestershire Baffins," replied the doctor gravely. "His mother was a Pillbrook. His uncle——"
I begged the doctor to restrain his gift of humour. "Where is Baffin? What is he?" I demanded again.
"Oh," said the doctor, "if you are really commonplace enough to be interested in a man himself when you ask, "who he is," I will expound this Baffin to you. He has red hair and freckles, and he is one of the Leicestershire Baffins, and he hates the Leicestershire Baffins, and he is a youth of great talents, who is supposed to live here, but at present he is reforming the Royal Academy, and reviving poster art in England. And he never puts anything where he will find it again, or shuts a drawer or folds his clothes. He is a genius. And—— Look out, I say, that's Baffin's bag."
It was Baffin's bag, and it assisted your servant in the performance of a complicated somersault. Baffin had left it on his doorstep.
Baffin's doorstep led into quite the wildest washhouse which I have ever viewed. Baffin's bed, consisting of three brown blankets strewn oddly upon a damaged ottoman, occupied most of the foreground, and behind this object lay, in some confusion, waistcoats, and easels, and broken chairs, and bas-reliefs, and unclean collars, and portfolios, and fencing sticks, and a rusty helm and vizor out of Wardour Street. And the walls were covered with crayon drawings and printed posters, all of them attached to the plaster by means of one corner and a pin, and all of them being curled at the edges and tanned with exposure. It was noticeable, also, that a bust of the Blessed Virgin, after Cinquevalli, was situated within the font or cavity of the copper. We removed this object in order to make room for the beer.