“What name?” asked Clementina, pricking her ears.
“Vandermeer.”
“Go on.”
“I tell the servant to show him in—and in comes a dilapidated devil looking like a mangy fox——”
“That’s the man.”
“Do you know him?”
“All right. Go on.”
“—— who squirms and wriggles and beats about the bush, and at last tells me that he is commissioned by my uncle to inform me that unless I give up painting and go into some infernal City office within a month he’ll stop my allowance and cut me out of his will.”
Clementina worked the thumb-tip through the hole in the right hand glove until the entire thumb was visible.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.