“Do you know, I couldn’t sleep the other night?” said the meagre, wrinkled old man with the pathetic stoop.
“Were you ill?” said Matt, sympathetically.
“No. Your foot kept me awake.”
Matt cast a furtive look at it, as if to read marks of guilt thereon.
“Yes; you must know I’m a shoemaker by trade, and love art, but I can’t devote myself to it like you young fellows. I work ’ard all day ’ammerin’ and stitchin’; it’s only in the evenings that I can spare an hour for paintin’.”
Matt’s eyes moistened sympathetically. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured.
“I knew you would be. I knew you had a beautiful nature. It always goes with beautiful feet. Ah, you smile! I’m an enthusiast, I admit, and you will smile more when you ’ear I sat up half the last two nights to create an artistic boot with your beautiful lines. You had given me the inspiration. I had to create there and then. I was tired of my day’s work, I was poor, and my time was valuable; but before all I am an artist. Sir, I have brought the boots with me”—here he produced a brown-paper parcel from under his arm—”and I shall be proud if you will accept them as a ’umble tribute from a lover of the beautiful.”
“No, no; I couldn’t think of taking them,” said Matt, blushing furiously.
“Oh, but you will vex me, sir, if you do not. It pains me enough already to think of you wearin’ the cumbrous, inartistic pair I see.”
“I won’t take them unless I pay you for them.”