LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter VIII

       Table of Contents

      And these two, as I have told you,

       Were the friends of Hiawatha,

       Chibiabos, the musician,

       And the very strong man, Kwasind.

       —Hiawatha

      Torpenhow was paging the last sheets of some manuscript, while the Nilghai, who had come for chess and remained to talk tactics, was reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.

      "It's picturesque enough and it's sketchy," said he; "but as a serious consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it's not worth much."

      "It's off my hands at any rate.... Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine slips altogether, aren't there? That should make between eleven and twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigh-ho!" Torpenhow shuffled the writing together and hummed—

      'Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell,

       If I'd as much money as I could tell,

       I never would cry, Young lambs to sell!'"

      Dick entered, self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of tempers with all the world.

      "Back at last?" said Torpenhow.

      "More or less. What have you been doing?"

      "Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind you. Here's Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven't done a line. It's scandalous."

      "The notions come and go, my children—they come and go like our 'baccy," he answered, filling his pipe. "Moreover," he stooped to thrust a spill into the grate, "Apollo does not always stretch his——Oh, confound your clumsy jests, Nilghai!"

      "This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration," said the Nilghai, returning Torpenhow's large and workmanlike bellows to their nail on the wall. "We believe in cobblers' wax. La!—where you sit down."

      "If you weren't so big and fat," said Dick, looking round for a weapon, "I'd——"

      "No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last time you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to say How d'you do? to Binkie. Look at him."

      Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round Dick's knee, and scratching at his boots.

      "Dear man!" said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the black patch above his right eye. "Did ums was, Binks? Did that ugly Nilghai turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie." He pitched him on the Nilghai's stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended to destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a sofa cushion extinguished him, and panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.

      "The Binkie-boy went for a walk this morning before you were up, Torp. I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters were being taken down—just as if he hadn't enough to eat in his own proper house," said Dick.

      "Binks, is that a true bill?" said Torpenhow, severely. The little dog retreated under the sofa cushion, and showed by the fat white back of him that he really had no further interest in the discussion.

      "Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too," said the Nilghai. "What made you get up so early? Torp said you might be buying a horse."

      "He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that. No, I felt lonesome and unhappy, so I went out to look at the sea, and watch the pretty ships go by."

      "Where did you go?"

      "Somewhere on the Channel. Progly or Snigly, or some watering-place was its name; I've forgotten; but it was only two hours' run from London and the ships went by."

      "Did you see anything you knew?"

      "Only the Barralong outwards to Australia, and an Odessa grain-boat loaded down by the head. It was a thick day, but the sea smelt good."

      "Wherefore put on one's best trousers to see the Barralong?" said Torpenhow, pointing.

      "Because I've nothing except these things and my painting duds. Besides, I wanted to do honour to the sea."

      "Did She make you feel restless?" asked the Nilghai, keenly.

      "Crazy. Don't speak of it. I'm sorry I went."

      Torpenhow and the Nilghai exchanged a look as Dick, stooping, busied himself among the former's boots and trees.

      "These will do," he said at last; "I can't say I think much of your taste in slippers, but the fit's the thing." He slipped his feet into a pair of sock-like sambhur-skin foot coverings, found a long chair, and lay at length.

      "They're my own pet pair," Torpenhow said. "I was just going to put them on myself."

      "All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy for a minute, you want to worry me and stir me up. Find another pair."

      "Good for you that Dick can't wear your clothes, Torp. You two live communistically," said the Nilghai.

      "Dick never has anything that I can wear. He's only useful to sponge upon."

      "Confound you, have you been rummaging round among my clothes, then?" said Dick. "I put a sovereign in the tobacco-jar yesterday. How do you expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you——"

      Here the Nilghai began to laugh, and Torpenhow joined him.

      "Hid a sovereign yesterday! You're no sort of financier. You lent me a fiver about a month back. Do you remember?" Torpenhow said.

      "Yes, of course."

      "Do you remember that I paid it you ten days later, and you put it at the bottom of the tobacco?"

      "By Jove, did I? I thought it was in one of my colour-boxes."

      "You thought! About a week ago I went into your studio to get some 'baccy and found it."

      "What did you do with it?"

      "Took the Nilghai to a theatre and fed him."

      "You couldn't feed the Nilghai under twice the money—not though you gave him Army beef. Well, I suppose I should have found it out sooner or later. What is there to laugh at?"

      "You're a most amazing cuckoo in many directions," said the Nilghai, still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. "Never mind. We had both been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent, and as you're only a loafer it didn't matter."

      "That's pleasant—from the man who is bursting with my meat, too. I'll get that dinner back one of these days. Suppose we go to a theatre now."

      "Put our boots on,—and dress,—and wash?" The Nilghai spoke very lazily.

      "I withdraw the motion."

      "Suppose, just for a change—as a startling variety, you know—we, that is to say we, get our charcoal and our canvas and go on with our work."

      Torpenhow spoke pointedly, but Dick only wriggled his toes inside the soft leather moccasins.

      "What a one-ideaed clucker that is! If I had any unfinished figures on hand, I haven't any model; if I had my model, I haven't any spray, and I never leave charcoal unfixed overnight; and if I had my spray and twenty photographs of backgrounds,

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