s no less behind the age than his material, his pictures
remained on his hands, while the "vicious horrors," as they seemed to
him, of the younger school held the field and captured the newspapers.
But as he had some private means, and no kith or kin but his niece, the
indifference of the public to his work caused him little disturbance.
He pleased his own taste, allowing himself a good-natured contempt for
the work which supplanted him, coupled with an ever-generous hand for
any post-Impressionist in difficulties.

On the August afternoon when Doris, escaping at last from her maids and
her accounts, made her way up to the studio, for some hours' work on the
last three or four illustrations wanted for a Christmas book, Uncle
Charles welcomed her with effusion.

"Where have you been, child, all this time? I thought you must have
flitted entirely."

Doris explained--while she set up her easel--that for the first time in
their lives she and Arthur had been seeing something of the great world,
and--mildly--"doing" the season. Arthur was now continuing the season in
Scotland, while she had stayed at home to work and rest. Throughout her
talk, she avoided mentioning the Dunstables.

"H'm!" said Uncle Charles, "so you've been junketing!"

Doris admitted it.

"Did you like it?"

Doris put on her candid look.

"I daresay I should have liked it, if I'd made a success of it. Of
course Arthur did."

"Too much trouble!" said the old painter, shaking his head. "I was in
the swim, as they call it, for a year or two. I might have stayed there,
I suppose, for I could always tell a story, and I wasn't afraid of the
big-wigs. But I couldn't stand it. Dress-clothes are the deuce! And
besides, talk now is not what it used to be. The clever men who can say
smart things are too clever to say them. Nobody wants 'em! So let's
'cultivate our garden,' my dear, and be thankful. I'm beginning a new
picture--and I've found a topping new model. What can a man want more?
Very nice of you to let Arthur go, and have his head. Where is
it?--some smart moor? He'll soon be tired of it."

Doris laughed, let the question as to the "smart moor" pass, and came
round to look at the new subject that Uncle Charles was laying in. He
explained it to her, well knowing that he spoke to unsympathetic ears,
for whatever Doris might draw for her publishers, she was a passionate
and humble follower of those modern experimentalists who have made the
Slade Sch