"Charles, you are the most tiresome——" began his mother.
"I know: I touch the limits of endurance. But I am pleased to have wiped your face for you. I shall want you at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. Goodness, how it rains! I am glad I'm not going to stand outside for a couple of hours."
Reggie had subsided into a large chair, and was toasting his feet at the fire.
"Mother's morose," he said, "when I was prepared to enjoy myself. She always was a kill-joy. Mother, darling, you shouldn't indulge in these melancholy fits. Consider what a great girl you are. Consider anything, but put lots of butter on the muffins. Charles, history repeats itself. Mr. Ward—opulent American, you know—came in again to-day with Craddock, and again he drew a cheque at my desk, and again, though I lent him my pen, he didn't tip me. He must be indecently rich, because to-day he gave Craddock a cheque for ten thousand and one hundred pounds."
"What had he bought?"
"Dunno. Some little trifle for the servants' hall I suppose. Ten thousand for the picture, one hundred for the frame, do you think? Oh, another thing: there was a long notice in the 'Whitehall' about the Exhibition at the 'British Painters and Etchers.' I brought it home. It says all kinds of things about the picture of me. Here it is: catch hold."
Charles snatched at the paper with all a boy's natural pride in being for the first time noticed in the press. Nor was the morose Mrs. Lathom less eager, for with muffin on toasting-fork she left the fire and read over his shoulder, and the moroseness vanished.
"Oh, Charles," she cried, "'Brilliant achievement—masterly technique—the gem of a rather mediocre exhibition—figure of a graceful stripling.'—Reggie, my graceful stripling, that's you—'a new note in English painting'—You darlings, what a pair of you! I should like to know who wrote it. I wish the people would sign their names."
But as Charles read his first impulse of pleasure faded altogether. At the end he crumpled the paper up, and threw it into the fender.
"Good Lord, what rot!" he said.