"I'm no judge of imps," answered Dick. "He's horribly ugly. Go on about yourself."
"Well, as I was saying," continued Simon, foreshortening his imp the while, "my luck has been wonderful. It all began with you. If you hadn't gone fishing there, I should never have seen Norway. If I hadn't seen it, I couldn't have painted it."
"I'm not sure that follows," interrupted Dick.
"Well, I shouldn't have painted it, then," resumed the artist. "And the credit I got for those Norway sketches was perfectly absurd. I see their faults now. They're cold and crude, and one or two are quite contrary to the first principles of art. I should like to paint them all over again. But still, if I hadn't been to Norway, I shouldn't be here now."
"No more should I," observed Dick, puffing out a volume of smoke. "I should have been 'marry-ed to a mermy-ed' by this time, if you had shown a proper devotion to your art, and the customary indifference to your friend."
"O, that was nothing!" said the painter, blushing. "Any other fellow could have pulled you out just as well. I say, Stanmore, how jolly it was over there! Those were happy days. And yet I don't wish to have them back again--do you?"
Dick sighed and held his peace. For him it seemed that the light heart and joyous carelessness of that bright youthful time was gone, never to come again.
"I have learned so much since then," continued Simon, putting a little grey into his imp's muzzle, "and unlearned so much, too, which is better still. Mannerism, Stanmore--mannerism is the great enemy of art. Now, I'll explain what I mean in two words. In the first place, you observe the light from that chink streaming down on my imp's back; well, in the picture, you know--"
"Where is the picture?" exclaimed Dick, whose cigar was finished, and who had no scruples in thus unceremoniously interrupting a professional lecture which previous experience told him might be wearisome. "Let's see it. Let's see all the pictures. Illustration's better than argument, and I can't understand anything unless it's set before me in bright colours, under my very nose."
Good-natured Simon desisted from his occupation at once, and began lifting picture after picture, as they stood in layers against the wall, to place them in a favourable light for the inspection of his friend. Many and discursive were his criticisms on these, the progressive results of eye, and hand, and brain, improving every day. Here the drawing was faulty, there the tints were coarse. This betrayed mannerism, that lacked power, and in a very ambitious landscape, enriched with wood, water, and mountain, a patchy sky spoiled the effect of the whole.