“Really?” cried Matt, in delighted excitement.
“Yes; he told me he didn’t like to ask you direct, because you looked so serious and strait-laced.”
“Oh!” protested Matt, with a vague sense of insult.
“Well, you do, there’s no denying it. Remember how you preached to me about the governor the first time you saw me. Perhaps you’ll go lecturing Cornpepper because he economizes by domesticating his model when he has a big picture on the easel. Personally, I like Cornpepper; he is the only fellow who has the courage of his want of principles in this whitewashed sepulchre of a country. But be careful that you don’t talk to him as you did to Rapper, for he lives up to his name. He is awfully peppery when you tread on his corns, though he has no objection to stamping on yours. Not that I believe there’s any real malice in him, but they say his master at the Beaux-Arts was a very quarrelsome fellow, and my opinion is that he models himself on him, and thinks that to quarrel with everybody is to be a great artist.”
“Oh, but don’t you think he will be a great artist?” said Matt.
“He is a great artist, but he won’t be,” said Herbert. “He’ll be an R.A. By Jove! we nearly ran over that Guardsman. Mary Ann has been standing him too many drinks. Do you know the price of a Guardsman, Matt?”
“The price?”
“Yes; a nurse-maid who wishes to be seen walking out with a swagger soldier has to give him half a crown and his beer.”
Herbert never lost an opportunity of showing off to Matt his knowledge of the inner working of the great social machine. Madame, passing her white hand lovingly over her boy’s hair, had no idea of the serpentine wisdom garnered in the brain beneath.
At the Marble Arch, Matt, carefully bearing the photograph of Rapper’s “Library,” got out of the hansom to exchange to a ’bus which passed near his street. He offered to pay his share of the hansom, but Herbert waved the silver aside with princely magnificence.