"Look! I will show you!"

With the swiftness of lightning he whipped a pencil from his pocket,
pushed aside his coffee-cup, and began to draw upon the marble-topped
table as though his life depended upon his speed.

For ten minutes he worked feverishly, his face intensely earnest, his
head bent over his task, a lock of dark hair drooping across his
forehead; then he looked up, throwing himself back in his chair and
gazing up at his companion with the egotistical triumph--the intense,
childish satisfaction of the artist in the first flush of accomplished
work.

"Look! Look, now, at this!"

The Irishman laughed sympathetically; the artist, as belonging to a race
apart, was known by him and liked, but he rose and came round the table
with a certain scepticism. Life had taught him that temperament and
output are different things.

He leaned over the boy's chair; then suddenly he laid his hand on his
shoulder and gripped it, his own face lighting up.

"Why, boy!" he cried. "This is clever--clever--clever! I'm a Dutchman,
if this isn't the real thing! Why on earth didn't you tell me you could
do it?"

The boy laughed in sheer delight and, bending over the table, added a
lingering touch or two to his work--a rough expressive sketch of himself
standing back from an easel, a palette in his left hand, a brush in his
right, his hair unkempt, his whole attitude comically suggestive of an
artist in a moment of delirious oblivion. It was the curt, abrupt
expression of a mood, but there was cleverness, distinction, humor in
every line.

"Boy, this is fine! Fine! That duel will be fought, take my word for
it. But, look here, we must toast this first attempt! Madame! Madame!"
He literally shouted the words, and madame came flying out.

"Madame, have you a liqueur brandy--very old? I have discovered that
this is a _fete_ day."

"But certainly, monsieur! A _cognac_ of the finest excellence."

"Out with it, then! And bring two glasses--no, bring three glasses! You
must drink a toast with us!"

Madame bustled off, laughing and excited, and again the Irishman gripped
the boy's shoulder.

"You've taken me in!" he cried. "Absolutely and entirely taken me in! I
thought you a slip of a boy with a head full of notions, and what do I
find but that it's a little genius I've got! A genius, upon my word! And
here comes the blessed liquor!"

His whole-hearted enthusiasm was like fire, it leaped from one to the
other of his companion