The words came from the heart, yet William did not appear to hear them. “Reminds one,” he murmured half to himself, “of that little thing of Duclaux’s called The Poor House.”
June’s puzzlement was revealed by a frown.
“There’s an exhibition of his pictures just now at the Bond Street Gallery. Wonderful line. A great sense of mass effect.”
“You can’t tell me,” said June, “there’s beauty in a thing like that—in that old Workhouse?”
“Duclaux would say so, with that dark cloud cutting across the gable. And that bend of the Canal in the foreground is not without value.” He smiled his rare smile which never had looked so divine. But June was a little afraid of it now. She kept her eyes the other way.
“Canal,” she said with brevity. “Not without value. I should say so. As we say at Blackhampton, ‘where there’s muck there’s money.’”
She glanced at her wrist again. Another ten minutes credited now to Mr. Mitchell’s account.
“Duclaux, I suppose, would see it this way.” The queer fellow stepped back two paces, put up his hand to shade his eyes and adjust his vision to look at the Workhouse.
This was Pure Pottiness, the concentrated essence in tabloid form. However, Miss Babraham had already impressed upon June the deep truth that genius must be allowed a margin.
A little faint of heart she rang the bell of the gloomy and forbidding door. The summons was heeded, tardily and with reluctance, by its janitor, a surly male.