Mr. Morewood is Moved to Indignation.
When Morewood was at work he painted portraits, and painted them uncommonly well. Of course he made his moan at being compelled to spend all his time on this work. He was not, equally of course, in any way compelled, except in the sense that if you want to make a large income you must earn it. This is the sense in which many people are compelled to do work, which they give you to understand is not the most suited to their genius, and it must be admitted that, although their words are foolish, not to say insincere, yet their deeds are sensible. There can be no mistake about the income, and there often is about the genius. Morewood, whose eccentricity stopped short of his banking account, painted his portraits like other people, and only deviated into landscape for a month in the summer, with the unfailing result of furnishing a crop of Morewoodesque parodies on Mother Nature that conclusively proved the fates were wiser than the painter.
This year it so chanced that he chose the wilds of Exmoor for the scene of his outrages. He settled down in a small inn and plied his brush busily. Of course he did not paint anything that the ordinary person cared to see, or in the way in which it would appear to such person. But he was greatly pleased with his work; and one day, as he threw himself down on a bank at noon and got out his bread and cheese, he was so carried away, being by nature a conceited man, as to exclaim:
"My head of Stafford was the best head done these hundred years; and that's the best bit of background done these hundred and fifty!"
The frame of the phrase seemed familiar to him as he uttered it, and he had just succeeded in tracing it back to the putative parentage of Lord Verulam, when, to his great astonishment, he heard Stafford's voice from the top of the bank, saying:
"As I am in your mind already, Mr. Morewood, I feel my bodily appearance less of an intrusion on your solitude."
"Why, how in the world did you come here?"
The spot was within ten miles of the Retreat, and part of Stafford's treatment for himself consisted of long walks; but he only replied:
"I am staying near here."
"For health, eh?"