Inside his little den in Jubilee Place the improvement was no less marked than in his person and demeanor. There was not a spot on his little red-and-white checked table-cloth, his crockery shone, his bed was neatly made. He had faced the new situation and had ceased to mope.
In my waistcoat pocket was a ring he had once given to Audrey Cunningham. Seeing his cheerfulness, I had not the slightest intention of reopening matters by telling him anything about that ring. If Audrey dropped rings as casually as he picked up pistols, very well; it was not my business to mar this cheery new beginning.
"Lightly boiled, or how?" he said, my egg poised in a teaspoon over the saucepan on the gas-ring.
"Yes—lightly boiled—anything," I replied. "Got any mustard for this ham?"
That too he had, and he had taken care over the preparation of his jug of coffee. He was entirely the old Monty again.
I don't know when I have enjoyed a lunch more, not even excepting the washing-up, which he insisted on doing the moment we had finished. "If there's one thing I loathe it's coming in to a lot of unwashed things," he explained. "Not a ha'porth of trouble once you get the habit."
Then he showed me the work on which he was engaged. That too had energy and movement again. One small sketch I liked and bought on the spot—a little thing, neither black-and-white nor color, or both if you like—a crayon sketch of a couple of infants in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, one of them with a shining round sixpenny balloon touched with a whiff of pink, the other with the doleful rag of one that had just exploded—the slightest, sweetest little bit of treasure-trove of the eye picked up in an afternoon's stroll.
"But not the copyright," he stipulated with a quick sideways glance at me. "I might be able to reproduce."
"Right; not the copyright," I agreed. I didn't mention it to him, in case it shouldn't come off, but I thought I might be able to help him with reproduction-rights. We have a good many side-shows on the Circus.
Then, in the middle of turning over further sketches, he broke suddenly into a gesture of remembrance.