“Heart!” thought Strange. “Poor beggar! it’ll be hard on him if he’s carried off before he learns to draw. Will you dine with me to-day?”
Brydon’s face lit, he had ecstatic memories of dinners with Strange, and as a matter of fact his dinners for two days past, had consisted of bread—and mustard to give it a relish.
“Thank you, old man, I can’t—I can’t go anywhere till Friday.”
“Why, in Heaven’s name?”
“I have some black and white to do,” he said mixing some paint hurriedly.
Strange took a glance at his back view and shrugged his shoulders.
“The beggar’s sure to let it out, he always does,” he reflected.
After a few minutes’ silent painting Brydon turned round.
“I generally tell you most things,” he said, “if you wait long enough, and you know by this time what an abject ass I am, so you may as well hear the climax.
“I was down sketching in Surrey last month. I went after the fever—I didn’t feel as if I could stand the stairs just then—and I found a girl in a cottage there who was willing to sit for me whenever I wanted her. She was—divine! Look!” he got up slowly and took a little canvas from behind the door. “Look! Did Greuse ever have such a head to paint from? I fell in love with her. Of course, it was that colour that did it; that, and her poses, and all her little ways and movements, and her soft little voice—oh—oh—you know the sort of fool I am! I lodged at her mother’s house, and the pair nursed me as if I were a sick cat—well—Look!—I had to leave that place at a moment’s notice or I don’t know what might have happened—you know. I paid up and cleared.