Mrs. Cleghorne was in a very good temper this morning. Michael could not help wondering if Mrs. Smith had paid some arrears of her rent.
“Do you think Mr. Cleghorne would go and fetch me a hansom?” Michael asked.
“He’s still in his bed, but I’ll go myself.”
This cheerfulness was really extraordinary; and Michael was flattered. Already he was beginning to feel some of the deference mixed with hate which throughout the underworld was felt toward landladies. Her condescension struck him with the sense of a peculiar favor, as if it were being bestowed from a superior height.
Michael packed up his kitbags and turned for a last look at the white rooms in Leppard Street. Suddenly it struck him that he would take with him one or two of the pictures and present them to Maurice’s studio in Grosvenor Road. Mona Lisa should go there, and the Prince of Orange whom himself was supposed to resemble slightly, and Don Baltazar on his big horse. They should be the contribution which he had been intending for some time to pay to that household. The cab was at the door, and presently Michael drove away from Leppard Street.
As soon as he was in the hansom he felt he could begin to think of Lily again, and though he knew that probably he was going to suffer a good deal when they met, he nevertheless thought of her now with elation. It had not seemed to be so sparkling a morning in Leppard Street; but driving toward Maurice’s studio along the banks of the river, Michael thought it was the most crystalline morning he had ever known.
“I’ve brought you these pictures,” he explained to Maurice, and let the gift account for his own long disappearance from communion with his friends. “They’re pretty hackneyed, but I think it’s rather good for you to have a few hackneyed things amid the riot of originality here. What are you doing, Mossy?”
“Well, I’m rather hoping to get a job as dramatic critic on The Point of View.”
“You haven’t met your lady-love yet?”
“No, rather not, worse luck. Still, there’s plenty of time. What about you?” Maurice asked the question indifferently. He regarded his friend as a stone where women were concerned.