aurel wreath exactly his size. Seems
Brooks was from a good fam'ly that had dropped their bundle somewhere
along the road; so this art racket that he'd taken up as a time killer
he'd had to turn into a steady job. He wa'n't paintin' just to keep
his brushes soft. He was out to win the kale.

Between the lines I gathers enough to guess that before she hooked up
with Ferdy, the head-achy one, Marjorie had been some mushy over Brooks
boy herself. He'd done a full length of her, it appears, and was
workin' up quite a portrait trade, when all of a sudden he ups and
marries someone else, a rank outsider.

"Too bad!" sighs Marjorie. "It has sadly interfered with his career,
I'm afraid."

"Ain't drivin' him to sign work, is it?" says I.

"Goodness, no!" says Marjorie. "Just the opposite. Of course, Edith
was a poor girl; but her Uncle Jeff is ever so rich. They live with
him, you know. That's the trouble--Uncle Jeff."

She's a little vague about this Uncle Jeff business; but it helps
explain why we roll up to a perfectly good marble front detached house
just off Riverside Drive, instead of stoppin' at one of them studio
rookeries over on Columbus-ave. And even I'm wise to the fact that
strugglin' young artists don't have a butler on the door unless there's
something like an Uncle Jeff in the fam'ly.

From the dozen or more cars and taxis hung up along the block I judge
this must be a regular card affair, with tea and sandwich trimmin's.
It's a good guess. A maid tows us up two flights, though, before we're
asked to shed anything; and before we lands Marjorie is gaspin' some,
for she ain't lost any weight since she collected Ferdy. Quite a
studio effect they'd made too, by throwin' a couple of servants' rooms
into one and addin' a big skylight. There was the regulation fishnet
draped around, and some pieces of tin armor and plaster casts, which
proves as well as a court affidavit that here's where the real,
sure-fire skookum creative genius holds forth.

It's a giddy bunch of lady gushers that's got together there too, and
the soulful chatter is bein' put over so fast it sounds like
intermission at a cabaret show. I'm introduced proper to Brooks boy
and Wifey; but I'd picked 'em both out at first glimpse. No mistakin'
him. He's got on the kind of costume that goes with the fishnet and
brass tea machine,--flowin' tie, velvet coat, baggy trousers, and all,
even to the Vandyke beard. It's kind of a pale, mu