is. For in
such cases I'm apt to be the one that's handiest, and you know what that
means. It's a matter of Torchy being joshed into tacklin' any old
proposition that may be batted up, with Mr. Robert standin' by ready to
spring the grin.

Take this little go of his with the Hallam Beans--excuse me, the F.
Hallam Beans. Doesn't that sound arty? Well, that's what they were, this
pair. Nothing but. I forget where it was they drifted in from, but of
course they couldn't have found each other anywhere but in Greenwich
Village. And in course of time they mated up there. It was the logical,
almost the brilliant thing to do. Instead of owing rent for two skylight
studios they pyramided on one; besides, after that each one could borrow
the makin's off the other when the cigarettes ran out, and if there came
pea-green moments when they doubted whether they were real geniuses or
not one could always buck up the other.

If they had stuck to the Village I expect we'd never heard anything
about them, but it seems along early last spring F. Hallam had a stroke
of luck. He ran across an old maid art student from Mobile who was up
for the summer and was dyin' to get right into the arty atmosphere. Also
she had $300 that her grip wasn't any too tight on, and before she knew
it F. Hallam had sub-let the loft to her until Sept. 15, payable in
advance. Two days later the Beans, with more'n half of the loot left,
were out on Long Island prospectin' around in our locality and talking
vague about taking a furnished bungalow. They were shown some neat ones,
too, runnin' from eight to fifteen hundred for three months, but none of
'em seemed to be just right. But when they discovered this partly
tumbled down shack out on a back lane beyond Mr. Robert Ellinses' big
place they went wild over it. Years ago some guy who thought he was
goin' to get rich runnin' a squab farm had put it up, but he'd quit the
game and the property had been bought up by Muller, our profiteerin'
provision dealer. And Muller didn't do a thing but soak 'em $30 a month
rent for the shack, that has all the conveniences of a cow shed in it.

But the Beans rented some second-hand furniture, bought some oil lamps
and a two-burner kerosene stove, and settled down as happy and contented
as if they'd leased a marble villa at Newport. From then on you'd be
liable to run across 'em most anywhere, squattin' in a field or along
the back roads with their easels and paint brushes, dau