rticularly civil and
grateful about my efforts, but she gave me only one more glimpse, and
that enigmatic, of any special reason why they should be made. Perhaps
this was more than compensated for by the abounding views I had of the
situation as it lay with Ingersoll Armour, but of that, other persons,
approaching the subject without prejudice, will doubtless judge better
than I.

Chapter 2.VIII.

It was better not to inquire, so I never knew to what extent Kauffer
worked upon the vanity of ancient houses the sinful dodge I suggested to
him; but I heard before long that the line of Armour's rejected efforts
had been considerably diminished. Armour told me himself that Kauffer's
attitude had become almost conciliatory, that Kauffer had even hinted
at the acceptance of, and adhesion to, certain principles which he would
lay down as the basis of another year's contract. In talking to me about
it, Armour dwelt on these absurd stipulations only as the reason why any
idea of renewal was impossible. It was his proud theory with me that to
work for a photographer was just as dignified as to produce under any
other conditions, provided you did not stoop to ideals which for lack
of a better word might be called photographic. How he represented it to
Dora, or permitted Dora to represent it to him, I am not so certain--I
imagine there may have been admissions and qualifications. Be that as
it may, however, the fact was imperative that only three months of the
hated bond remained, and that some working substitute for the hated bond
would have to be discovered at their expiration. Simla, in short, must
be made to buy Armour's pictures, to appreciate them, if the days of
miracle were not entirely past, but to buy them any way. On one or two
occasions I had already made Simla buy things. I had cleared out young
Ludlow's stables for him in a week--he had a string of ten--when he
played polo in a straw hat and had to go home with sunstroke; and I once
auctioned off all the property costumes of the Amateur Dramatic Society
at astonishing prices. Pictures presented difficulties which I have
hinted at in an earlier chapter, but I did not despair. I began by
hauling old Lamb, puffing and blowing like a grampus, up to Amy Villa,
filling him up all the way with denunciations of Simla's philistinism
and suggestions that he alone redeemed it.

It is a thing I am ashamed to think of, and it deserved its reward.

Lamb criticized and patron