“I do not wish to employ menaces,” continued Léon, with a smile; “but if you refuse, indeed I shall not take it kindly.”
“I don’t quite see my way out of it,” thought the undergraduate; and then, after a pause, he said, aloud and ungraciously enough, “All right. I—I’m very much obliged, of course.” And he proceeded to follow them, thinking in his heart, “But it’s bad form, all the same, to force an obligation on a fellow.”
CHAPTER V
Léon strode ahead as if he knew exactly where he was going; the sobs of Madame were still faintly audible, and no one uttered a word. A dog barked furiously in a courtyard as they went by; then the church clock struck two, and many domestic clocks followed or preceded it in piping tones. And just then Berthelini spied a light. It burned in a small house on the outskirts of the town, and thither the party now directed their steps.
“It is always a chance,” said Léon.
The house in question stood back from the street behind an open space, part garden, part turnip-field; and several outhouses stood forward from either wing at right angles to the front. One of these had recently undergone some change. An enormous window, looking towards the north, had been effected in the wall and roof, and Léon began to hope it was a studio.
“If it’s only a painter,” he said with a chuckle, “ten to one we get as good a welcome as we want.”
“I thought painters were principally poor,” said Stubbs.
“Ah!” cried Léon, “you do not know the world as I do. The poorer the better for us!”
And the trio advanced into the turnip-field.