t
you fretting about that letter for? I don't want your letter."

Beaton stopped biting his cigarette and looked at him. "Don't want my
letter? Oh, very good!" he bristled up. He took his cigarette from
his lips, and blew the smoke through his nostrils, and then looked at
Fulkerson.

"No; I don't want your letter; I want you."

Beacon disdained to ask an explanation, but he internally lowered his
crest, while he continued to look at Fulkerson without changing his
defiant countenance. This suited Fulkerson well enough, and he went on
with relish, "I'm going out of the syndicate business, old man, and I'm
on a new thing." He put his leg over the back of a chair and rested his
foot on its seat, and, with one hand in his pocket, he laid the scheme
of 'Every Other Week' before Beaton with the help of the other. The
artist went about the room, meanwhile, with an effect of indifference
which by no means offended Fulkerson. He took some water into his mouth
from a tumbler, which he blew in a fine mist over the head of Judas
before swathing it in a dirty cotton cloth; he washed his brushes and
set his palette; he put up on his easel the picture he had blocked on
the day before, and stared at it with a gloomy face; then he gathered
the sheets of his unfinished letter together and slid them into a drawer
of his writing-desk. By the time he had finished and turned again to
Fulkerson, Fulkerson was saying: "I did think we could have the first
number out by New-Year's; but it will take longer than that--a month
longer; but I'm not sorry, for the holidays kill everything; and by
February, or the middle of February, people will get their breath again
and begin to look round and ask what's new. Then we'll reply in the
language of Shakespeare and Milton, 'Every Other Week; and don't you
forget it.'" He took down his leg and asked, "Got a pipe of 'baccy
anywhere?"

Beaton nodded at a clay stem sticking out of a Japanese vase of bronze
on his mantel. "There's yours," he said; and Fulkerson said, "Thanks,"
and filled the pipe and sat down and began to smoke tranquilly.

Beaton saw that he would have to speak now. "And what do you want with
me?"

"You? Oh yes," Fulkerson humorously dramatized a return to himself from
a pensive absence. "Want you for the art department."

Beaton shook his head. "I'm not your man, Fulkerson," he said,
compassionately. "You want a more practical hand, one that's in touch
with what's going. I'm getting