“Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now, and wanted to know whether you were here. I said you were. The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for you—that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you would go out with them, and take a run up to Ardishaig.”
“I can’t, Johnny.”
“I’d take you out, you know.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“But look here, Lavender,” said the young man, seizing hold of Lavender’s boat, and causing the easel to shake dangerously; “he asked me to luncheon, too.”
“Why don’t you go, then?” was the only reply, uttered rather absently.
“I can’t go without you.”
“Well, I don’t mean to go.”
The younger man looked vexed for a moment, and then said, in a tone of expostulation, “You know it is very absurd of you going on like this, Lavender. No fellow can paint decently if he gets out of bed in the middle of the night, and waits for daylight to rush up to his easel. How many hours have you been at work already to-day? If you don’t give your eyes a rest, they will get color-blind to a dead certainty. Do you think you will paint the whole place off the face of the earth, now that the other fellows have gone?”
“I can’t be bothered talking with you, Johnny. You’ll make me throw something at you. Go away.”