“Charity and art do not mix, old man.”
“The hell they don’t,” replied Osprey testily. “But as you say, one must see for oneself. You are going to make Mrs. Harlindew’s acquaintance, and whatever you think of charity, you will buy a picture from her as a favour to me. Not too soon, you understand, and not too obtrusively. She shied at me frightfully when I bought this one. I had to tell her that I had made quite a collection of the work of promising beginners for reasons of my own.”
Roget found his friend nearly always transparent. Ten years ago he would have said there was considerably more than the mere fervour of the artist in this championship. But he had since become acquainted with a wholly new side of the man, and it was difficult to believe him capable of losing his head over a pretty bride who happened to rent his house.
“You say she is married?” he contented himself with asking, dryly.
A flicker of humorous comprehension passed over the other’s face.
“Yes,” he replied shortly, “but the fellow neglects her.”
Roget’s manner became once more indulgent.
“Well, I shall try to buy this picture. I don’t know what to do with it after I get it. There are mighty few pictures worth buying. Perhaps not more than twenty in the world.”
He dismissed the subject and sat down at Osprey’s piano. His study of the instrument had come late, in young manhood. Lacking any great musical scholarship or conventional training, he nevertheless played whatever he had heard that pleased him, with extraordinary tenderness and effect.