"No, not in this particular instance. Shall I begin?"
"Shoot," I said.
He began with his usual graceful gesture:
Landon was dead broke.
As it had not been convenient for him to breakfast that morning, he was irritable. The mockery of handsome hangings and antique furniture in the outer studio increased his irritation as he walked through it into the rough, inner workshop, which was hung with dusty casts and dreary with clay and plaster.
Here Ellis found him, an hour later, smoking a cigarette to deceive his appetite, and sulkily wetting down the clay bust of a sheep-faced old lady—an order of the post-mortem variety which he was executing from a gruesome photograph.
"How," inquired Ellis, "is the coy Muse treating you these palmy, balmy days?"
Landon swore and squirted a spongeful of water over the old lady's side curls.