"He thinks he can run the bunch just as well as Larry. Barney's clever
all right, and has plenty of nerve--but he's not in Larry's class. Not
by a million miles!"

Hunt perceived that this daring, world-defying, embryonically beautiful
model of his had idealized the homecoming nephew of the Duchess into her
especial hero. Hunt said no more, but painted rapidly. Night had fallen
outside, and long since he had switched on the electric lights. He
seemed not at all finicky in this matter of light; he had no supposedly
indispensable north light, and midday or midnight were almost equally
apt to find him slashing with brush or scratching with crayon.

Presently the Duchess entered. No word was spoken. The Duchess,
noteworthy for her mastery of silence, sank into a chair, a bent and
shrunken image, nothing seemingly alive about her but her faintly
gleaming, deep-set eyes. Several minutes passed, then Hunt lifted the
canvas from the easel and stood it against the wall.

"That's all for to-day, Maggie," he announced, pushing the easel to one
side. "Duchess, you and this wild young thing spread the banquet-table
while I wash up."

He disappeared into a corner shut off by burlap curtains. From within
there issued the sound of splashing water and the sputtering roar of
snatches of the Toreador's song in a very big and very bad baritone.

Maggie put out a hand, and kept the Duchess from rising. "Sit
still--I'll fix the table."

Silently the Duchess acquiesced. Maggie had never felt any tenderness
toward this strange, silent woman with whom she had lived for three
years, but it was perhaps an indication of qualities within Maggie,
whose existence she herself never even guessed, that she instinctively
pushed the old woman aside from tasks which involved any physical
effort. Maggie now swung the back of a laundry bench up to form a
table-top, and upon it proceeded to spread a cloth and arrange a medley
of chipped dishes. As she moved swiftly and deftly about, the Duchess
watching her with immobile features, these two made a strangely
contrasting pair: one seemingly spent and at life's grayest end, the
other electric with vitality and giving off the essence of life's
unknown adventures.

Hunt stepped out between the curtains, pulling on his coat. "You'll find
that chow in my fireless cooker will beat the Ritz," he boasted. "The
tenderest, fattest kind of a fatted calf for the returned prodigal."

Maggie started. "The prodig