“Long past the luncheon hour,” John assured him. “Come!”
Corin reluctantly laid down his chisel, turned for a final look at masonry, herb Robert, and chevrons.
“And to think,” he ejaculated, “that the plaster hides all this! There must be ten coats of plaster or thereabouts. After the first Goth, the first horrible Philistine, plastered, no one can have known what was hidden, and they just went on plastering at intervals. I’ve made out six plasters for certain,—grey, green, white adorned with awful scroll-work, purple, green again with more scroll-work, and then this dingy brown,” he waved his hand towards the walls. “There are other plasters so stuck together no one can distinguish them, and underneath it all, this.” He touched a flower in a kind of subdued and dreamy ecstasy.
John took him once more kindly but firmly by the arm.
“It’s extremely beautiful,” he said in a tone conciliatory. “Presently you shall rhapsodize again to your heart’s content and I’ll help you. At the moment,” he propelled him gently towards the ladder, “we leave ecstasy for the mundane, the mere sordid occupation of eating.”
CHAPTER VI
MRS. TRIMWELL
Mrs. Trimwell, brisk, black eyed, white-aproned, entered with a covered dish.
Corin, deep in an armchair, was smoking a cigarette.
“I wonder,” said he meditative, between the inhalations of smoke, “what the old painter of the church down yonder thinks of our proceedings. It would be interesting to hear his own reflections on the subject. Presumably he does reflect. If his spirit haunts the church, possibly some fine evening I shall see him. Then I shall put a question or two.”
John merely laughed, and approached the table. Mrs. Trimwell, raising a dish-cover, disclosed two golden-brown soles, perfect samples of her culinary art.