Frederick Stone, N.A., member of the Stone Mugs, late war correspondent and special artist on the spot, paused before the cheerful blaze of his studio fire, shaking the wet snow from his feet. He had tramped across Washington Square in drifts that were over his shoe-tops, mounted the three flights of steps to his cosey rooms, and was at the moment expressing his views on the weather, in terms more forcible than polite, to our very old friend, Jack Bedford, the famous marine-painter. Bedford, on hearing the sound of Fred's footsteps, had strolled in from his own studio, in the same building, and had thrown himself into a big arm-chair, where he was sitting hunched up, his knees almost touching his chin, his round head covered by a skull-cap that showed above the chair-back.
"Nice weather for ducks, Jack, isn't it? Can't see how anybody can get here to-night," cried Fred, striking the mantel with his wet cap, and scattering the rain-drops over the hearth. "Just passed a Broadway stage stuck in a hole as I came by the New York Hotel. Been there an hour, they told me."
"Shouldn't wonder. Whose night is it, Fred?" asked Jack, stretching out one leg in the direction of the cheery blaze.
"Horn's."
"What's he going to do?"
"Give it up. Ask me an easy one. Said he wanted a thirty by forty. There it is on the easel," and Fred moved a chair out of his way, hung his wet coat and hat on a peg behind the door, and started to clear up a tangle of artillery harness that littered the floor.
"Thirty by forty, eh," grunted Jack, from the depths of his chair. "Thunder and Mars! Is the beggar going to paint a panorama? Thought that canvas was for a new cavalry charge of yours!" He had lowered the other leg now, making a double-barrelled gun of the pair.
"No; it's Horn's. He's going to paint one of the fellows to-night."
"In costume?" Jack's head was now so low in the chair that his eyes could draw a bead along his legs to the fire.
"Yes, as an old Burgomaster, or something with a ruff," and he kicked an army blanket into a corner as he spoke. "There's the ruff hanging on that pair of foils, Waller sent it over." Then his merry eyes fell on Jack's sprawled-out figure, his feet almost in the grate—a favorite attitude of his neighbor's when tired out with the day's work, comfortable perhaps, but especially objectionable at the moment.