n studio, and to
start men to digging trenches for the foundations!

CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT VITTOREO MATTEO, MASTER OF BLACK
MUD, ARRIVES! BRAVA! HE DEPARTS! BRAVA!

One day a tall, slender, black-haired, black-mustached and black-eyed
young man, in a severely ministerial black frock suit, dropped off the
train and inquired in an undoubted foreign accent for the Atlas Hotel.
Even the station loungers recognized him at once as the great and
long-expected artist, Signor Vittoreo Matteo, who, save in the one
respect of short hair, was thoroughly satisfying to the eye and
imagination. Even before the spreading of his name upon the register
of the Atlas Hotel, all Blakeville knew that he had arrived.

In the hotel office he met J. Rufus. Instantly he shrieked for joy,
embraced Wallingford, kissed that discomfited gentleman upon both
cheeks and fell upon his neck, jabbering in most broken English his
joy at meeting his dear, dear friend once more. In the privacy of
Wallingford's own room, Wallingford's dear Italian friend threw
himself upon the bed and kicked up his heels like a boy, stuffing the
corner of a pillow in his mouth to suppress his shrieks of laughter.

"Ain't I the regular buya-da-banan Dago for fair?" he demanded,
without a trace of his choice Italian accent.

"Blackie," rejoiced Wallingford, wiping his eyes, "I never met your
parents, but I've a bet down that they came from Naples as ballast in
a cattle steamer. But I'm afraid you'll strain yourself on this. Don't
make it too strong."

"I'll make Salvini's acting as tame as a jointed crockery doll,"
asserted Blackie. "This deal is nuts and raisins to me; and say, J.
Rufus, your sending for me was just in the nick of time. Just got a
tip from a post-office friend that the federal officers were going to
investigate my plant, so I'm glad to have a vacation. What's this new
stunt of yours, anyhow?"

"It's a cinch," declared Wallingford, "but I don't want to scramble
your mind with anything but the story of your own life."

To his own romantic, personal history, as Vittoreo Matteo, and to the
interesting fabrications about the world-famous Etruscan pottery, in
the village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy, Blackie listened most
attentively.

"All right," said he at the finish; "I get you. Now lead me forth to
the merry, merry villagers."

Behind the spanking bays which had made Fannie Bubble the envied of
every girl in Blakeville, Wallingford dr