or two."

Delia came and hung about his neck.

"Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not
as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I
teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as
millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister."

"All right," said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish.
"But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't Art. But you're a
trump and a dear to do it."

"When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard," said Delia.

"Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park," said Joe.
"And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may
sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them."

"I'm sure you will," said Delia, sweetly. "And now let's be thankful for
Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast."

During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe
was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in
Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised
and kissed at 7 o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times
7 o'clock when he returned in the evening.

At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly
tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8x10 (inches) centre table of the
8x10 (feet) flat parlour.

"Sometimes," she said, a little wearily, "Clementina tries me. I'm
afraid she doesn't practise enough, and I have to tell her the same
things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that
does get monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you
could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at
the piano--he is a widower, you know--and stands there pulling his white
goatee. 'And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers
progressing?' he always asks.

"I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe! And
those Astrakhan rug portieres. And Clementina has such a funny little
cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting
attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother
was once Minister to Bolivia."

And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five,
a two and a one--all legal tender notes--and laid them beside Delia's
earnings.

"Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he
announced overwhelmingly.