“What a picture to make!” said Phil. “That horse just now reared under the rein with a movement as superb as any of the Parthenon. Behind him was that theatrical poster representing a woman with her hair floating—with her and the horse you might imagine a troupe of Amazons under the blue sky of Greece! Only artists can enjoy things. They know how to see!”
“The poor beast has lost a shoe, and the collar wounds him and the cabman lashes him,” Ethel interrupted. “Poor animal, it makes me ill to see him!”
Phil thought to himself, “That is what I ought to have seen!”
Apart from these excursions, he gave to Miss Rowrer, also, whatever leisure was left him by his great picture of Morgana. At her request, he accompanied her with Will and grandma in their visits to museums and to the shops where they wished to buy pictures of the masters for their palace on the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
Will had first visited the artists’ studios, thinking he would find there a world free from the atmosphere of business. But the landscape man tried to get him away from the portrait-painter, and professional jealousy showed its teeth. They tried to pass off their “old stock” on him; they spoke only of money. “For such a price I will do so and so.” “If it is larger it will be dearer.” “A landscape without trees is worth so much—with trees, twice as much!”
“If I’ve got to talk business,” Will thought, “I’d rather do it with business men”; and he left the artists alone.
Poufaille’s Goods Ready for Auction
He liked best to choose for himself at the Hôtel Drouot—that big collecting-sewer of art, rolling pell-mell in its dusty waves masterpieces and daubs. The salesrooms, heaped from ceiling to floor, gave him the feeling that he might sometime make a discovery there like the cock who found pearls in a dunghill.