"When your brain once gets in motion, Ik, fiction will be its natural product. You must admit that I have not painted many pictures."
"That is one of the things I complain of; I, your bosom friend and familiar, your, I might add, guardian angel—I, who have so often saved your life by quenching the flame of your consuming genius with a hearty dinner, have been able to obtain one picture only from you, and as one might draw a tooth. Your pictures are like old maid's children—they must be so perfect that they can't exist at all. But come, the ten minutes are up. Here's the programme for the evening—a drive in the Park and a little dinner at a cool restaurant near Thomas's Garden, and then the concert. That prince of musical caterers has made a fine selection for to-night, and, with the cigar stand on one side of us and the orchestra on the other, we are certain to kill a couple of hours that will die like swans."
"You mention the cigar-stand first."
"Why not? Smoke is more real than empty sound."
"Are you not equally empty, Ik, save after dinner? How have the preceding hours of this long day been killed?"
"Like boas. They have enfolded me with a weary weight."
"The snakes in your comparison are larger than your pun, and the pun, rather than yourself, suggests a constrictor's squeeze."
"Come, you are only abusing me to gain time, and you may gain too much. My horses have more mettle than their master, and may carry off my trap and groom to parts unknown, while you are wasting paint and words. You are like the animals at the Park, that are good-natured only after they are fed. So shut up your old paint shop, and come along; we will shorten our ride and lengthen our dinner."
With mutual chaffing and laughter the young men at last went down to where a liveried coachman and a pair of handsome bays were in waiting. Taking the high front seat and gathering up the reins, Ik Stanton, with his friend Harold Van Berg at his side, bowled away towards the Park at a rapid pace.
Harold Van Berg was, in truth, something of a paradox. He was an artist, and yet was rich; he had inherited large wealth, and yet had formed habits of careful industry. The majority of his young acquaintances, who had been launched from homes like his own, were known only as sons of their fathers, and degenerate sons at that. Van Berg was already winning a place among men on the ground of what he was and could do himself.