“You are enjoying a great deal of leisure, Mr. Montgomery,” Mr. Lambert remarked one evening, looking at the writhing youth over his spectacles. “Is it a vacation—or a habit?”
P. Hyacinth smiled uncertainly, with a beseeching expression in his large blue eyes.
“Neither a vacation—nor yet exactly a—a habit, sir. I—I have my own philosophy of life, as you might say—”
“Ah!—a rather expensive one, I _do_ say,” interrupted Mr. Lambert. “You are fortunate to be able to afford your philosophy. You expect to remain for long in these parts?”
“Not _very_ long—that is, I—my plans are not definite.”
“My wife has given me to understand that you are—an _artist_?” Mr. Lambert observed in a tone that almost overcame the miserable Hyacinth.
“Not really—that is—with me, sir, Art is an—an avocation, as you might say—”
“I am not surprised that it _is_,” remarked Mr. Lambert, and after that, he withdrew into his shell of icy silence, evidently waiting for further developments before he expressed his opinion of P. Hyacinth still more plainly.
In Jane, Elise found a highly sympathetic confidante, but even Jane was prompted to ask frankly,
“But what does he do, Elise? Does he sell his pictures?”
“He does,” cried Elise. “He’s sold _three_! He did a perfectly lovely design once for a stationer’s advertising calendar—it was a picture of a girl, he said, with a lot of red roses in her arms. And he did a picture of some wild animals for a sportsman’s den.”
“I—he didn’t tell me. We started to talk of something else. Oh, Jane, are you going to be horrid about him, too?” cried Elise, suddenly bursting into tears. Then, having grown quite artful where any defense of her suitor was necessary, she added, “Paul was an artist, and you didn’t laugh at _him_!” To Jane it seemed hardly worth while to point out what appeared to her to be the many differences between Paul and Mr. Montgomery. So she disregarded Elise’s challenge, and putting both arms around her sister, said half-laughing,
“You know I’m not going to be horrid about him. I like him very much.”
“Do you really, Janey?” asked Elise, brightening. “Oh, Jane you can’t imagine how unselfish he is. He—he said he’d give up everything for me. He said he’d break stones in a quarry—boo—hoo!” And here Elise again dissolved into tears.