“Oh yes, do let him see them,” said Madame, hurriedly. “It’s only for once.”
“Oh, well, as you’re a sort of relation,” said the father, imposingly. “But I make it a point not to interrupt him. These hours are precious; there’s not too much light at the best of times.” And, as if following Matt’s impulse, he rose and turned doorward.
“There’s no need for you to trouble, Josephine,” he said, waving her back.
As they mounted the soft-carpeted staircase, on which undraped marble statues looked down from their niches, he explained, gravely, “There’s a male model up there, you see.”
Matt nodded, awed to silence by the splendor of the staircase, up which he toiled side by side with the Vandyke beard and the velvet coat.
“Herbert, of course, uses the side door,” vouchsafed his companion, graciously, to relieve the monotony of the long ascent. “I couldn’t have his models coming through the shop.”
Matt murmured something negative, but his reply was lost in a dull thud from above. The elder man cleared the remaining stairs in alarm, and threw open the door.
“Give us a hand up, you beggar,” a piping girlish voice was saying.
On the rich carpet of the vast, elegant studio, whose glories dazzled Matt’s vision, a slim young man was sprawling on his back. Over him stood a stalwart figure, clad only in boxing-gloves.
The saturnine picture-dealer rushed forward and helped his boy up.
“It’s all right, dad,” said Herbert, in unembarrassed amusement as he was scrambling to his feet. “I just wanted to give the model’s arms a little movement during the rest. The position’s so difficult for him, I haven’t been able to get the thing right all day. Look! there’s nothing at all on the canvas; I’ve had to paint it out.”
The model had somewhat shamefacedly taken off his gloves and struck an attitude upon the throne.
“Ha!” said Matthew Strang, in vague accents. “You ought to be getting on faster with those gold-medal studies, now that you have put aside your picture for this year’s Academy. You will need all your time, you know. I’ve brought you a visitor.”
Herbert turned his face towards the door--the handsome, glowing face of a boy, beardless and clean-shaven, with candid blue eyes and tumbled flaxen hair, and the flash of white teeth accustomed to display themselves in laughter. There was his father’s interrogative mark about the arched eyebrows as he caught sight of Matt, hanging back timidly on the threshold.