“What does that mean?”
“That means smoke, sir; you are enjoying the heavenly luxury of tobacco, not the less intensely that it obscures the view.”
“No, Dolly, I'll not have that. If you put me there, don't have me smoking; make me sitting beside you as we are now,—you drawing, and I looking over you.”
“But I want to be a prophet as well as a painter, Tony. I desire to predict something that will be sure to happen, if you should ever build this cottage.”
“I swear I will,—I 'm resolved on it.”
“Well, then, so sure as you do, and so sure as you sit in that little honeysuckle-covered porch, you 'll smoke.”
“And why not do as I say? Why not make you sketching—”
“Because I shall not be sketching; because, by the time your cottage is finished, I shall probably be sketching a Maori chief, or a war-party bivouacking on the Raki-Raki.”
Tony drew away his arm and leaned back in his chair, a sense almost of faintish sickness creeping over him.
“Here are the dogs too,” continued she. “Here is Lance with his great majestic face, and here Gertrude with her fine pointed nose and piercing eyes, and here's little Spicer as saucy and pert as I can make him without color; for one ought to have a little carmine for the corner of his eye, and a slight tinge to accent the tip of his nose. Shall I add all your 'emblems,' as they call them, and put in the fishing-rods against the wall, and the landing-net, and the guns and pouches?”