Not until he was on the point of entering the cottage did Anthony notice the artist. Seated upon the traditional camp-stool, the latter was sketching busily some twenty-five paces away. Apparently absorbed in his work, he never so much as threw the newcomers a glance, and Lyveden was more than half minded to let him be. Patch, however, thought differently. Even as his master turned to the door, there was a low growl, and a moment later the Sealyham was baying the intruder as if he had been a convict.
Calling the dog sharply, Lyveden advanced to apologize.
The lazy brown eyes hardly looked at him, and the slender fingers never left their work for an instant; but a pleasant smile leapt into the stranger's face, and, ere the apology was voiced, he spoke with the utmost good humour.
"Please don't scold him. He's perfectly right. I'm a trespasser and a vagabond. I have no visible means of subsistence, and, if these things are crimes, I'm an habitual criminal. If you really don't want me to draw your cottage, I'll stop. But you must say so right out. And it isn't the cottage so much as the background I'm after. To be frank, this looks a promising place. I'm out for woodland—something that's not too tidy."
Anthony smiled grimly.
"Orderliness," he said, "is hardly our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made the most of her time."
"You sound," said the other, "as if you had authority. Am I free of the place, or not?"
For a second Anthony hesitated. Strangers were not to his taste. There was, however, a quiet careless indifference about the fellow's manner which was reassuring. Moreover, he liked the look of him, there was nothing monstrous about his attire—he might have stepped off a golf-course—and there was a kindly expression upon the intellectual face. Somehow the droop of a fair moustache subscribed to the suggestion of laziness which the eyes had put forward. Indeed, his whole demeanour argued the simple creed "Live, and let live."
Lyveden had just decided to give the required encouragement when the other knocked out his pipe.
"That's all right," he said lightly. "I never take offence. And I'm a rare believer in privacy. If I had a place in the country I should have a ten-foot wall about it and a guard-room at every lodge. It's not that I'm a misanthrope, but to my mind there's not much point in ownership if you don't——"