entlemen and whose
souls expand as they get more and more filled with the alcohol of human
kindness? If so, I should like to meet them."

"There isn't any as could toss off a quart like that."

"Have you always lived in Melford?"

"Oh no," replied the landlord, as if resenting the suggestion, "I was
born and bred in Devizes."

"It must be a devil of a place, Devizes," said Paragot.

"It be none so bad," assented the landlord. A woman's voice from the bar
summoned him away. Paragot pushed his unfinished quart from him and
rose. He shook his head sadly.

"I am disappointed in that man. He is a mere bucolic idiot. I shall
waste my talents intellectual and bibulous on him no longer. Our
excursion into the Bohemia of Melford is a failure, my little Asticot,
and the beer is confoundedly sour. I am glad I did not vagabondise in
rural England."

"Why?" I asked.

"To avoid an asylum for idiots I should have rushed into the dissenting
ministry. I might have expected mine host to be a dullard. In this
country the expected always happens, which paralyses the brain. Now let
us go home to lunch."

He paid the bill, and as we issued from the door of the inn we fell into
the arms of Joanna and Major Walters.

The latter regarded us superciliously, and Joanna catching his glance
flushed to the wavy hair over her forehead. The ordinary greetings
having been exchanged, she proudly and markedly drew Paragot ahead,
leaving me to follow with Major Walters. As he made no remark of any
kind during our little walk, I did not find him an exhilarating
companion.

CHAPTER XX

I HAD worked till the last glimmer of daylight at the portrait, which
was now approaching completion.

"That's the end of it for to-day," said I, laying my palette and brushes
aside, and regarding the picture.

Joanna rose from her chair by the fire where she had been sewing for the
last hour and stood by my side. The morning-room, which had a clear
north-east light through the French window leading into the garden, had
been assigned to me as a studio, and here, sometimes on a murky
afternoon, Joanna, who preferred the bright, chintz-covered place to the
gloomy drawing-room, honoured me with her company. Mrs. Rushworth was
asleep upstairs, and Paragot had gone for a solitary walk. We were
cosily alone.

It pleased my lady to be flattering.

"It is wonderful how a boy like you can do such work--for you _are_ a
boy, Asticot," she said with one of