displayed, anger that he should be content to do
nothing greater.

His days were largely spent in their studios where, seated in the most
comfortable chair he could find, he would smoke lazily and watch them at
work and criticise freely. Men grumbled and laughed at his presumption,
but were ready to acknowledge the justice of his criticism. He had an
excellent eye for color and effect and for the contrast of light and
shade, and those whose pictures were hung, were often ready enough to
admit that the canvas owed much of its charm to some happy suggestion on
Cuthbert's often ready part.

Every two or three months he went home for a fortnight. He was greatly
attached to his father, and it was the one drawback to the contentment
of his life that he had been unable to carry out the Squire's wishes,
and to settle down with him at Fairclose. He would occasionally bemoan
himself over this to his friends.

"I am as bad as the prodigal son," he would say, "except that I don't
get what I deserve, and have neither to feed on husks nor to tend swine;
but though the fatted calf would be ready for me if I were to return I
can't bring myself to do so."

"I don't know about being a prodigal," Wilson, one of the oldest of his
set would grumble in reply, "but I do know you are a lazy young beggar,
and are wasting your time and opportunities; it is a thousand pities you
were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Your father ought to have
turned you adrift with an allowance just sufficient to have kept you on
bread and butter, and have left you to provide everything else for
yourself; then you would have been an artist, sir, and would have made a
big name for yourself. You would have had no occasion to waste your time
in painting pot-boilers, but could have devoted yourself to good,
honest, serious work, which is more than most of us can do. We are
obliged to consider what will sell and to please the public by turning
out what they call pretty pictures--children playing with dogs, and
trumpery things of that sort. Bah, it is sickening to see a young fellow
wasting his life so."

But Cuthbert only laughed good-temperedly, he was accustomed to such
tirades, and was indeed of a singularly sweet and easy temper.

It was the end of the first week in May, the great artistic event of the
year was over, the Academy was opened, the pictures had been seen and
criticised, there was the usual indignation at pictures being hung
generally vote