d.

"Why, it's on'y ten minutes to six!" cried the astonished girl, gazing
at a grandfather's clock as if it were bewitched.

"You've never had such a shock since you were born," went on the
sarcastic Eliza. "But don't thank _me_, my girl. Thank Mr. Trenholme,
the gentleman stannin' there grinnin' like a Cheshire cat. Talk to him
nicely, an' p'raps he'll paint your picter, an' then your special
butcher boy will see how beautiful you reelly are."

"Jim don't need tellin' anything about that," said the girl, smiling,
for Eliza's bark was notoriously worse than her bite.

"Jim!" came the snorting comment. "The first man who ever axed me to
marry him was called Jim, an' when, like a wise woman, I said 'No,' he
went away an' 'listed in the Royal Artillery an' lost his leg in a
war--that's what Jim did."

"What a piece of luck you didn't accept him!" put on Trenholme.

"An' why, I'd like to know?"

"Because he began by losing his head over you. If a leg was missing,
too, there wasn't much of Jim left, was there?"

Mary giggled, and Eliza seized the egg again; so Trenholme ran to his
sitting-room. Within half an hour he was passing through the High
Street, bidding an affable "Good morning" to such early risers as he
met, and evidently well content with himself and the world in general.
His artist's kit revealed his profession even to the uncritical eye,
but no student of men could have failed to guess his bent were he
habited in the garb of a costermonger. The painter and the poet are
the last of the Bohemians, and John Trenholme was a Bohemian to the
tips of his fingers.

He carried himself like a cavalier, but the divine flame of art
kindled in his eye. He had learned how to paint in Julien's studio,
and that same school had taught him to despise convention. He looked
on nature as a series of exquisite pictures, and regarded men and
women in the mass as creatures that occasionally fitted into the
landscape. He was heart whole and fancy free. At twenty-five he had
already exhibited three times in the Salon, and was spoken of by the
critics as a painter of much promise, which is the critical method of
waiting to see how the cat jumps when an artist of genius and
originality arrests attention.

He had peculiarly luminous brown eyes set well apart in a face which
won the prompt confidence of women, children and dogs. He was
splendidly built for an out-door life, and moved with a long, supple
stride, a gait which peo