outburst
of fire.

He was silent a moment and then continued: "I had no difficulty in
persuading her to let me paint the boy. I don't think she rightly
understood what I meant, except that for some foolish reason I was
prepared to give her money, apparently in return for nothing, that I
meant to have little Jack decently dressed--"

"Jack--was that his name?"

"Yes, and that he was to spend certain hours--snatched from Trafalgar
Square--in my house in Kensington."

"I see."

"The boy turned up in the jersey and cap and boots I had bought him. And
then his education began. On first entering my studio he was numb with
surprise, a moving and speechless stare--more overcome than by
rainbows."

"Poor little chap!"

"I let him stray about examining everything. He did so completely
oblivious of my presence, and of the fact that all the things in the
place were mine. By his demeanour one might have supposed him engaged in
an examination of works of God never before brought to his notice. While
I smoked and pretended to read, he crept about like a little animal,
penetrating into corners where statues stood, smelling--so it
seemed--the angles of painted walls, touching the petals of flowers,
smoothing rugs the wrong--but soon the right--way. I can hear his new
boots creaking still. He was a very muscular little chap, but small.
When he was able to speak I questioned him. He had never seen the sea.
He had never been out of London for a day or slept away from Drury Lane
for a night. The flask was empty; now to pour the wine into it. I told
him to sit down by the open hearth. He obeyed, staring hard at me before
he sat, hard at the chair when he was sitting. I interested him much
less than old brocade and lighted wax candles, which inspired him with a
solemnity that widened his eyes and narrowed his features. He looked on
a new, and never-before-imagined, life. And he was grave to excess,
though, later, I found plenty of the London child's impish nature in
him."

"That impish quality hides in nearly all street-bred children," said
Uniacke. "I have seen larkiness dawn in them for an instant at some
recollection, even when they were dying."

"I daresay. I can believe it. But Jack was solemn at first, his brow
thunderous with thought, as he examined his chair and the rug under his
new boots. Then in the firelight I began my task. I wrought to bring
about in this Trafalgar Square soul a sea change. For a time I did not
att