"I have nothing for the Winter Academy, just now," said Gordon, appearing to relent a little. "Strangely enough, Miss Van Rossum doesn't care to have her portrait exhibited. If I really found a remarkable type, I'd like to do a mother and child. If you really think this Mrs. Dupont will keep still and is willing to earn a few weeks of bread and cheese by the silence of her tongue and some ability to sit quietly in a chair without getting the fidgets, I shouldn't mind trying her. But, of course, she'd have to come up to specifications. I'll have to look at her first. Have you spoken to her about it?"
"Not a word," I answered, "I didn't want to see her disappointed."
"Of course, it's a foolish thing to do," he said, "but you're so anxious about it that I'll see whether it can be managed. She's just heard of her husband's death, has she? Well, she won't be thinking of other men for a while and won't expect to be made love to. Take up your hat, and we'll go over to that nursery of yours. I'll look her over."
If I hadn't known him so well, I should have been provoked at his speaking as if the woman had been some second-hand terrier I wanted to dispose of. We took the elevator and were shot down to the ground floor.
"Mind you," he warned me, "it's ten to one that I'll discover something that will make this errand useless. The mere fact of a woman's having a broken-down voice and a baby doesn't necessarily qualify her to pose as a mother. The woods are full of them. You've probably endowed her with good looks that exist only in your imagination."
To this I made no answer. The mere fact of his having consented to investigate was already a distinct triumph for me. Twenty minutes later we were climbing up the stairs of what he called my zoological boarding-house.
On the second landing, he stopped abruptly and listened. Then he turned to me with a corner of his mouth twisted in the beginning of one of his sarcastic grins.
"Who's that playing your piano?" he asked.
"I—I fancy it must be Mrs. Dupont," I answered. "You see, she's very much alone, and my door was open, and I suppose she saw the thing and walked in, not knowing that I should return so soon."
"Oh! You needn't look so sheepish," he told me. "You look as if a policeman had caught you with a jimmy in your hip-pocket. My dear old boy, I hope she isn't the straw that's going to break your back, you old Bactrian camel! The little wagons they use for the carrying of dynamite in New York, wherewith to soften its tough old heart and permit the laying of foundations, are painted red and marked explosives. Were I the world's czar, I should have every woman labelled the same way. They're dangerous things."