uick change of
expression broke over his face.

"You're very kind, Mr. Walkingshaw!" he said warmly.

"Tuts, tuts, not a bit. I want to warm up my study with a splash of
color. That's the way you artists would put it. Eh?"

"A splash of color--yes."

"You see, I'm getting the hang of your lingo already, Vernon. And now,
what else have you got for sale? What do you recommend, Hillary, eh?"

That young man displayed a sudden aptitude for business which had never
characterized his own efforts to make a livelihood.

"As a work of art likely to rise enormously in value, I conscientiously
recommend that," he said, pointing to another canvas.

"A nice head," commented Mr. Walkingshaw. "High-toned yet spiritual, one
might term it. I like the way the eyes seem to look out of the paper--or
is it canvas it's done on?"

"Oh--er--I beg your pardon," said Lucas, waking suddenly from his
reverie; "I--I'll let you have that thrown in."

"Wits a wool-gathering, Vernon?" smiled his patron indulgently. "But I
dare say you've some excuse. I'll take the picture with pleasure, but I
insist on paying for it. Let us put this at twenty-five pounds."

"I won't let you!" cried Lucas. "I give it you--I make you a present of
it. You've been so kind already--"

"Pooh! Come, come," interrupted Mr. Walkingshaw kindly, yet firmly.
"You've got to make your way, and how will you do that if you give away
your--fruits of the brush you'd call them, I suppose, eh?"

The artist could not but admit the force of this argument, and in the
course of an hour had the satisfaction of selling, at considerably above
his usual market price, no fewer than four of his masterpieces; while
Mr. Walkingshaw, on his part, became the fortunate possessor of a
promising but unfinished sylvan scene, the portrait of an unknown lady,
a rainy day upon the Norfolk coast, and (what he considered the gem of
the collection) a recognizable panorama of Edinburgh from the north,
including among its minor details a splash of red ocher which he felt
certain was the grand stand at the Scottish Union's football field. This
recalled the sympathetic widow, and gave the picture a sentimental as
well as an artistic value. He could have wished that on this, as indeed
on most other occasions, the artist had paid more attention to
verisimilitude and less to mere vague harmonies and so forth, but as he
was assured by that intelligent young Hillary that this method was all
the Go at prese