expect it is, only you don't know where
to have Eugene. And there's the parson."

"Yes; Ayre told us a bit about him. But she doesn't care for him?"

"She didn't tell him so--not by any means," said Bob; "and I bet he's
far gone on her."

"She can't take him."

"Good Lord! no."

Though how they proposed to prevent it did not appear.

"Think Lane'll write to her?"

"He ought to, right off."

"Queer girl, ain't she?"

"Deuced!"

"Old Ayre! I say, Bob, you should have seen the old sinner at Baden."

"What? with Kate?"

"No; the other business."

And they plunged into matters with which we need not concern ourselves,
and proceeded to rend and destroy the character of that most
respectable, middle-aged gentleman, Sir Roderick Ayre. The historian
hastens to add that their remarks were, as a rule, entirely devoid of
truth, with which general comment we may leave them.

CHAPTER X.

Mr. Morewood is Moved to Indignation.

When Morewood was at work he painted portraits, and painted them
uncommonly well. Of course he made his moan at being compelled to spend
all his time on this work. He was not, equally of course, in any way
compelled, except in the sense that if you want to make a large income
you must earn it. This is the sense in which many people are compelled
to do work, which they give you to understand is not the most suited to
their genius, and it must be admitted that, although their words are
foolish, not to say insincere, yet their deeds are sensible. There can
be no mistake about the income, and there often is about the genius.
Morewood, whose eccentricity stopped short of his banking account,
painted his portraits like other people, and only deviated into
landscape for a month in the summer, with the unfailing result of
furnishing a crop of Morewoodesque parodies on Mother Nature that
conclusively proved the fates were wiser than the painter.

This year it so chanced that he chose the wilds of Exmoor for the scene
of his outrages. He settled down in a small inn and plied his brush
busily. Of course he did not paint anything that the ordinary person
cared to see, or in the way in which it would appear to such person. But
he was greatly pleased with his work; and one day, as he threw himself
down on a bank at noon and got out his bread and cheese, he was so
carried away, being by nature a conceited man, as to exclaim:

"My head of Stafford was the best head done these hundred years; and