sed
London so well that now London expressed him, and that
was something.

Kendal found the Cardiffs--there were only two, Janet
and her father--at tea, and the Halifaxes there, four
people he could always count on to be glad to see him.
It was written candidly in Janet's face--she was a natural
creature--as she asked him how he dared to be so unexpected.
Lady Halifax cried out robustly from the sofa to know
how many pictures he had brought back; and Miss Halifax,
full of the timid enthusiasm of the well-brought-up
elderly English girl, gave him a sallow but agreeable
regard from under her ineffective black lace hat, and
said what a surprise it was. When they had all finished,
Lawrence Cardiff took his elbow off the mantelpiece,
changed his cup into his other hand to shake hands, and
said, with his quiet, clean-shaven smile, "So you're
back!"

"Daddy has been hoping you would be here soon," said Miss
Cardiff. "He wants the support of your presence. He's
been daring to enumerate 'Our Minor Artists' in the _Brown
Quarterly_, and his position is perfectly terrible.
Already he's had forty-one letters from friends, relatives,
and picture-dealers suggesting names he has 'doubtless
forgotten.' Poor daddy says he never knew them."

"Has he mentioned me?" asked Kendal, sitting down squarely
with his cup of tea.

"He has not."

"Then it's in the character of the uncomplaining left-over
that I'm wanted, the modest person who waits until he's
better. I refuse to act. I'll go over to the howling
majority."

"_You_ will never be a minor artist, Mr. Kendal," ventured
Miss Halifax.

"Certainly not. You will rise to greatness at a bound,"
said Lady Halifax, with substantial conviction and an
illustrative wave of a fat well-gloved hand with a
doubled-up fragment of bread and butter between the thumb
and forefinger, "or we shall be much disappointed in
you."

"It's rapidly becoming a delicate compliment to have been
left out," Mr. Cardiff remarked, with melancholy.

"Some of those you've honored with your recognition are
the maddest of all, aren't they, daddy, as we say in
America! Dear old thing, you _are_ in a perilous case,
and who is to take you round at the Private Views this
year--that's the question of the hour! You needn't depend
upon me. There won't be a soul on the line that you
haven't either put in or left out!"

"It was a fearful thing to write about," Kendal responded
comfortably. "He deserves all the