So Mendel brought the picture, and the Professor said:—
“I mean to say, young man, that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you gave up work a little. I don’t want to have to send in a bad report, but what can I do? There’s something in you, plenty of grit and all that, but you’re young, and, I mean to say, you’re here to learn what we can teach you. When we’ve done with you, you can go your own way and be hanged to you. If you want to smudge about with paint and fake what you can’t draw, there’s the Academy.”
At this awful suggestion Mendel shuddered. He was imbued enough with the Detmold tradition to regard the Academy as Limbo.
He gave up painting at home, and hurled himself desperately at the task of producing a drawing that should satisfy the Professor. Towards the end of his first term he succeeded, and had his reward in words of praise in front of the class.
The Professor had meanwhile taken one of the pupils aside and asked him not to leave the poor little devil so utterly alone. “After all,” he said, “the school doesn’t exist only for drawing. It has its social side as well, and I don’t like to see any one cold-shouldered unless he deserves it. I mean to say, you other fellows have advantages which don’t necessarily entitle you to mop up all the good things and leave none for your fellow-creatures.”
Mitchell, the pupil, took his homily awkwardly enough, but promised that he would do what he could. He seized his opportunity one day when Mendel at lunch had horrified the company by picking up a chicken bone and tearing at it with his teeth. Mitchell took him aside and said:—
“I say, Kühler, old man, you’ll excuse my mentioning it, you know, but it isn’t done. I mean, we eat our food with forks.”
Mendel knew what was meant, for at lunch he had been conscious of horrified eyes staring at him and had wished the floor would open and swallow him up. He muttered incoherent words of thanks and wanted to rush away, but Mitchell caught him by the arm and said:—
“I say, we artists must hang together. There aren’t many of this crowd who will come to anything, and the Pro thinks no end of you. Won’t you come along and have tea with me and some of the other fellows?”
Mendel went with him, delighting in the young man’s easy, condescending Public School manner and pleasant, crisp voice, in which he spoke with an exaggerated emphasis.