“Weren’t you in the Grosvenor Gallery last summer?” asked a bald middle-aged man.
“Yes; I was Setter’s ‘Moonbeam,’” began the model, proudly.
“I thought I recognized you,” said the middle-aged man, with an air of ancient friendship.
“And I was also on the line in the big room,” she added--“Colin Campbell’s ‘Return of the Herring-Boats.’ And I got into the Royal Institute as well--Saxon’s ‘Woman Wailing for Her Demon Lover.’”
“Ah, here you are, then!” said a red-haired young man, producing an illustrated catalogue.
“Yes,” said she, turning over a few pages. “And there’s my husband--Sardanapalus, 223. They often have him at the Academy Schools,” she wound up, with conscious pride.
“Ah, perhaps we shall get him here one week,” said the middle-aged man.
While his mentor was taking down her address, Matt looked round the room. The austere Grainger, with a cigarette in his mouth, was reading a yellowish paper embellished with comic cuts. Most of the students were moving about, looking at one another’s easels, the work on which, with few exceptions, Matt was surprised to find mediocre; a few sat stolidly humped on their stools, feet on rail and pipe in mouth; one group was examining photographs which its central figure had taken, and which he loudly declared knocked the painting of the Fishtown School to fits. From all sides the buzz of voices came through the stifling, smoky, darkened atmosphere.
“Rather! Another S,” contemptuously replied a very young man, seated, smoking a very long pipe before a very indifferent canvas.
“What do you mean, Bubbles?” asked a by-stander.
“What, haven’t you noticed,” he answered, with ineffable disdain, swinging his arm in illustration, “that the lines of his compositions are all curly--they always make S?”
“I thought they always made £ _s._ _d._,” interjected a curly-headed wag. And all except the very young man laughed.
“Bubbles is gone on Whistler,” observed a freckle-faced student, compassionately.
“I admire him,” admitted the very young man, candidly, “but I don’t say he’s the end of art.”
“No; that’s reserved for Bubbles,” laughed the freckle-faced student.
“What _is_ the end of art, Bubbles?” said another man.
“T, of course,” put in the curly-headed wag. “Five o’clock and fashionable.”