He put on his hat and led the two marvelling youngsters to a public-house, where he became a different man altogether. The compression of his lips relaxed, his eyes twinkled and his face shone with good humour, and he made them and the barmaid and the two or three men who were shyly taking their beer roar with laughter. He had an extraordinary gift of mimicry, and told story after story, many of them against himself, most of them without point, but in the telling exceedingly comic. Mendel sat up and bristled. It was to him half shocking, half enviable, that a man, and an artist, should be able to laugh at himself.
“If you’ll give me free drinks for a month,” said Logan to the elderly barmaid, “I’ll paint your portrait. Are you married? . . . No? I’ll paint you such a beautiful portrait that it will get you a husband inside a week.”
“I’m not on the marrying lay,” said the barmaid.
“Terrible thing, this revolt against marriage,” replied Logan, “and bad luck on us artists. I’m always getting babies left on my doorstep.”
“What do you do with them?” said Mendel, believing him, and astonished when the others roared with laughter.
“I keep the pretty ones and sell them to childless mothers. Ah! Many’s the time I’ve gone through the snow, like the heroine in a melodrama taking her child to the workhouse.”
“Oh! go on,” tittered the barmaid.
“Certainly,” said Logan. “Come along.”
As they left the public-house he took Mendel’s arm and said:—
“You have to talk to people in their own language, you know.”