ized every blessed thing he saw, advised
Armour to beware of mannerisms and to be a little less liberal with his
colour, and heard absolutely unmoved of the horses Armour had got into
the Salon. 'I understand,' he said, with a benevolent wink, 'that about
four thousand pictures are hung every year at the Salon, and I don't
know how many thousand are rejected. Let Mr. Armour get a picture
accepted by the Academy. Then he will have something to talk about.'

Neither did Sir William Lamb buy anything at all.

The experiment with Lady Pilkey was even more distressing. She gushed
with fair appropriateness and great liberality, and finally fixed upon
one scene to make her own. She winningly asked the price of it. She
had never known anybody who did not understand prices. Poor Armour, the
colour of a live coal, named one hundred rupees.

'One hundred rupees! Oh, my dear boy, I can never afford that! You must,
you must really give it to me for seventy-five. It will break my heart
if I can't have it for seventy-five.'

'Give me the pleasure,' said Armour, 'of making you a present of it. You
have been so kind about everything, and it's so seldom one meets
anybody who really cares. So let me send it to you.' It was honest
embarrassment; he did not mean to be impertinent.

And she did.

Blum, of the Geological Department--Herr Blum in his own country--came
up and honestly rejoiced, and at end of an interminable pipe did
purchase a little Breton bit that I hated to see go--it was one of
the things that gave the place its air; but Blum had a large family
undergoing education at Heidelberg, and exclaimed, to Armour's keenest
anguish, that on this account he could not more do.

Altogether, during the months of August and September, persons resident
in Simla drawing their income from Her Majesty, bought from the
eccentric young artist from nowhere, living on Summer Hill, canvases and
little wooden panels to the extent of two hundred and fifty rupees. Lady
Pilkey had asked him to lunch--she might well! and he had appeared at
three garden-parties and a picnic. It was not enough.

It was not enough, and yet it was, in a manner, too much. Pitiful as
it was in substance, it had an extraordinary personal effect. Armour
suddenly began to turn himself out well--his apparel was of smarter cut
than mine, and his neckties in better taste. Little elegances appeared
in the studio--he offered you Scotch in a Venetian decanter and
Melachrinos