An hour later a cart came up the lane, and the lawyer’s piano—a momentous Broadwood grand—was deposited in Mr. Pitman’s studio.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH MICHAEL FINSBURY ENJOYS A HOLIDAY
Punctually at eight o’clock next morning the lawyer rattled (according to previous appointment) on the studio door. He found the artist sadly altered for the worse—bleached, bloodshot, and chalky—a man upon wires, the tail of his haggard eye still wandering to the closet. Nor was the professor of drawing less inclined to wonder at his friend. Michael was usually attired in the height of fashion, with a certain mercantile brilliancy best described perhaps as stylish; nor could anything be said against him, as a rule, but that he looked a trifle too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman. To-day he had fallen altogether from these heights. He wore a flannel shirt of washed-out shepherd’s tartan, and a suit of reddish tweeds, of the colour known to tailors as “heather mixture“; his neckcloth was black, and tied loosely in a sailor’s knot; a rusty ulster partly concealed these advantages; and his feet were shod with rough walking boots. His hat was an old soft felt, which he removed with a flourish as he entered.
“Here I am, William Dent!” he cried, and drawing from his pocket two little wisps of reddish hair, he held them to his cheeks like side-whiskers and danced about the studio with the filmy graces of a ballet-girl.
Pitman laughed sadly. “I should never have known you,” said he.
“Nor were you intended to,” returned Michael, replacing his false whiskers in his pocket. “Now we must overhaul you and your wardrobe, and disguise you up to the nines.”