hess in silent bewilderment. He had thought he had
known his grandmother. He was now realizing that perhaps he did not know
his grandmother at all.

CHAPTER VIII

That night Larry slept on a cot set up in Hunt's studio. Hunt had made
the proposition that Larry consider the studio his headquarters for
the present, and Larry had accepted. Of course the cot and the
rough-and-ready furnishings of the studio were grotesquely short of the
luxury of those sunny days when Larry had had plenty of easy money and
had been free to gratify his taste for the best of everything; but the
quarters were infinitely more luxurious and comfortable than his more
recent three-by-seven room at Sing Sing with its damp and chilly stone
walls.

There were many reasons why Larry was appealed to by the idea of making
his home for the present in this old house in this dingy, unexciting,
unromantic street. He was drawn toward this bluff, outspoken, autocratic
painter, and was curious about him. And then the way his grandmother had
spoken, the gleam in her old eyes, had stirred an affection for her
that he had never before felt. And then there was Maggie, with her
startlingly new dusky beauty, her admiration of him that had so swiftly
altered to defiance, her challenge to a duel of purposes.

Yes, for the present, this dingy old house in this dingy old street was
just the place he preferred to be.

It was not the part of wisdom to start forth on the beginning of his new
career in his shapeless prison shoddy; so the next day Larry pottered
about the studio, acting as maid-of-all-work, while the clothes in his
trunk which had been stored with the Duchess were being sponged and
pressed by the little tailor down the street, and while a laundress,
driven by the Duchess, was preparing the rest of his outfit for his
debut. In his capacity of maid, with a basket on his arm, he went out
into the little street, where in his shabby clothes he was recognized by
none and leaned for a time against the mongrel, underfed tree that was
hesitatingly greeting the spring with a few half-hearted leaves. He
bathed himself in the warm sun which seemed over-glorious for so mean
a street; he filled his lungs with the tangy May air; yes, it was
wonderful to be free again!

Then he strolled about the street on his business of marketing. It
amused him to be buying three pounds of potatoes and a pound of
chopped meat and a package of macaroni, and to be counting Hu