"Give you a hand? Rather! By Jove, with your view you ought to be able to make this place perfectly ripping! How are you thinking of doing your windows?"
Amory had known that he would be enthusiastic. She began to say something about muslin, but Cosimo shook his handsome tendrilled head peremptorily. He loosed himself from the bond of hair and faced round, cross-legged, before her.
"Oh no, you mustn't dream of having muslin! I know something _far_ better than that! There's a remnant-sale at Peter Hardy's, and they have some shop-soiled casement-cloth at one-four-three double width, all colours; _that's_ your stuff! Oh, decidedly!... Then stencil it--something like Dickie's yoke there, only a broader treatment, of course--and there you are! They'll take down and put up again in a couple of jiffs, and you have to put muslin up wet, and it catches every bit of dust, and only washes about twice--oh no: the casement-cloth by all means!... Now, what furniture have you got?..."
He entered wholeheartedly into her plans; he was so handsome and intuitive, so big and tall, yet so almost femininely sympathetic. Amory could have hugged him, there was so little of the mere superior blatant male about him.... They plunged into a discussion--or rather Cosimo plunged into a harangue--on the most satisfactory way of staining floors....
Dorothy had been talking to Mr. Bielby, the young man who had been "just brought along," and had discovered that he was still at the McGrath. Suddenly she gave a laugh and a call to Laura Beamish.
"I say, Laura! Mr. Jowett's still just the same as ever, Mr. Bielby says," she said.
Walter Wyron broke into a laugh. "Jowett? 'Pon my word, I'd almost forgotten poor old Jowett! Immortelle's _his_ flower, I should say! What's Jowett's latest, Bielby?"
Mr. Bielby related the "latest" of the Painting Professor through whose hands so many students had passed, all so different and all so exactly alike, that he had been driven to find what peace of mind he could in a saturnine resignation. Walter Wyron laughed again.
"Dear old Jowett! But he seems to be getting a bit below his game. He used to get off better ones than that. Do you remember him on the womanly woman, Dickie?"