“If you can get the paint off again,” said Mr. Preemby. “You see if I was to move—back.... It’s all right to have all this paint in a Mew. But out of a Mew....”
“Exactly,” said Harold. “My idea is to make a little pink house of it with windows and so on. Something very simple. Rather like the scenery of a Russian Sketch. Chauve Souris sort of stuff. Conventional to the nth. And we might put up placards at the corner of it according to what is going on. Make a bit of an institution of it.”
“So long as it makes things agreeable,” said Mr. Preemby.
He found his hair being ruffled affectionately. “Dear little Daddy!” said Christina Alberta.
§ 5
But now appeared a new-comer and life was made uncomfortable and complicated for Christina Alberta again by the presence of Mr. Teddy Winterton’s candid insincerity. His graceful body, his movements, his voice, stirred her senses as she hated them to be stirred; his quiet impudence invaded her sense of humour; he wounded her pride and she longed to be even with him. She had no power over him and he behaved as if he owned her. She was always letting him go just a little too far. When he was about her nose cast a shadow that reached to her horizon. He stood now in the doorway—trousers of one pattern of tweed, waistcoat of another, Norfolk jacket of a third extensively unbuttoned in the accepted student style, and he watched Mr. Preemby carry his collection of roc’s bones, found near Staines, across the studio on a tea-tray. His eyes were round with surprise and amusement; his mouth said noiselessly, “What is it?”
Christina Alberta was not going to have her Daddy laughed at by any Teddy Winterton. “Mr. Winterton,” she said. “This is my father.”
“I’ll just get rid of my bones,” said Mr. Preemby, “and then I’ll shake hands.”
“We’ll just finish up Mr. Preemby’s things and then we’ll all go round to Poppinetti’s to get some dinner,” said Fay. “There’s hardly anything left to unpack now.”
“Just one or two Antediluvium bones,” said Mr. Preemby.