tiated on the charming work.
He used the jargon of the studios with overpowering effect.

"I don't know that I see anything so wonderful as all that in it," said
Hayward.

"Of course it's a painter's picture," said Philip. "I can quite believe
the layman would see nothing much in it."

"The what?" said Hayward.

"The layman."

Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was
extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not
venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very
modest. He was impressed by Philip's assurance, and accepted meekly
Philip's implied suggestion that the painter's arrogant claim to be the
sole possible judge of painting has anything but its impertinence to
recommend it.

A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their party. Cronshaw, making an
exception in their favour, agreed to eat their food; and Miss Chalice
offered to come and cook for them. She took no interest in her own sex and
declined the suggestion that other girls should be asked for her sake.
Clutton, Flanagan, Potter, and two others made up the party. Furniture was
scarce, so the model stand was used as a table, and the guests were to sit
on portmanteaux if they liked, and if they didn't on the floor. The feast
consisted of a pot-au-feu, which Miss Chalice had made, of a leg of
mutton roasted round the corner and brought round hot and savoury (Miss
Chalice had cooked the potatoes, and the studio was redolent of the
carrots she had fried; fried carrots were her specialty); and this was to
be followed by poires flambees, pears with burning brandy, which
Cronshaw had volunteered to make. The meal was to finish with an enormous
fromage de Brie, which stood near the window and added fragrant odours
to all the others which filled the studio. Cronshaw sat in the place of
honour on a Gladstone bag, with his legs curled under him like a Turkish
bashaw, beaming good-naturedly on the young people who surrounded him.
From force of habit, though the small studio with the stove lit was very
hot, he kept on his great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his bowler
hat: he looked with satisfaction on the four large fiaschi of Chianti
which stood in front of him in a row, two on each side of a bottle of
whiskey; he said it reminded him of a slim fair Circassian guarded by four
corpulent eunuchs. Hayward in order to put the rest of them at their ease
had clothed himself in a tweed suit