“I builded better than I knew, Torp,” he said, without stopping the dance.
“They’re good! They’re damned good! They’ll go like flame! I shall have an exhibition of them on my own brazen hook. And that man would have cheated me out of it! Do you know that I’m sorry now that I didn’t actually hit him?”
“Go out,” said Torpenhow,—“go out and pray to be delivered from the sin of arrogance, which you never will be. Bring your things up from whatever place you’re staying in, and we’ll try to make this barn a little more shipshape.”
“And then—oh, then,” said Dick, still capering, “we will spoil the Egyptians!”
CHAPTER IV
The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,
When the smoke of the cooking hung gray:
He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,
And he looked to his strength for his prey.
But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away.
And he turned from his meal in the villager’s close,
And he bayed to the moon as she rose.
—In Seonee.
“Well, and how does success taste?” said Torpenhow, some three months later. He had just returned to chambers after a holiday in the country.
“Good,” said Dick, as he sat licking his lips before the easel in the studio.
“I want more,—heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I approve of these fat ones.”
“Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work.”