“Oh, he’s on his own now, of course. I tell you he’s a big pot. He was at the Slade though, I believe.”
“Oh? Oh, I knew some Slade people in Paris.” And then, because she could not help it—“Their paint’s awfully muddy.”
Justin was deep in his letter again, but he came to the surface for a moment to say paternally—
“Oh, of course! You sketch yourself a bit, don’t you? You must get him to give you some tips.”
And she with a letter in her pocket at that moment, a cordial letter, an almost anxiously enquiring letter, from Monsieur La Motte! But naturally, or, if you were a man, oddly enough, it was not Justin but Oliver Seton whom she wanted to shake.
“Is he really nice? Did you like him?” she asked Mrs. Cloud when Justin had left the room. He never sat out other people’s breakfast.
Mrs. Cloud wore her quaintly unhappy look. She disliked discussing any one whom she could not whole-heartedly praise. But Laura had a way of dragging Mrs. Cloud’s opinions out of her that Mrs. Cloud, always resisting, nevertheless enjoyed almost as much as she enjoyed her son’s invariable assumption that they must be the same as his own.
“He’s a very clever young man. And we must be pleasant to him, Laura, for Justin’s sake.”
“Ah, I thought you didn’t,” said Laura, with satisfaction. “Now what exactly is it—conceit?”
But Mrs. Cloud said that Laura must finish her coffee, because the poor waiter was obviously wanting to clear away.