ad runs to
the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and
photographer call "bits." So that Mr Watkins, on his arrival with
two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paint-box, portmanteau, an
ingenious little ladder made in sections (after the pattern of the
late lamented master Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found
himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half-a-dozen
other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen
unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable
amount of aesthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly
prepared.

"Have you exhibited very much?" said Young Person in the bar-parlour
of the "Coach and Horses," where Mr Watkins was skilfully accumulating
local information on the night of his arrival.

"Very little," said Mr Watkins, "just a snack here and there."

"Academy?"

"In course. _And_ the Crystal Palace."

"Did they hang you well?" said Porson.

"Don't rot," said Mr Watkins; "I don't like it."

"I mean did they put you in a good place?"

"Whadyer mean?" said Mr Watkins suspiciously. "One 'ud think you were
trying to make out I'd been put away."

Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man
even for an artist; he did not know what being "put away" meant, but
he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As
the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr Watkins, he tried
to divert the conversation a little.

"Do you do figure-work at all?"

"No, never had a head for figures," said Mr Watkins, "my miss--Mrs
Smith, I mean, does all that."

"She paints too!" said Porson. "That's rather jolly."

"Very," said Mr Watkins, though he really did not think so, and,
feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp,
added, "I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight."

"Really!" said Porson. "That's rather a novel idea."

"Yes," said Mr Watkins, "I thought it rather a good notion when it
occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night."

"What! You don't mean to paint in the open, by night?"

"I do, though."

"But how will you see your canvas?"

"Have a bloomin' cop's--" began Mr Watkins, rising too quickly to the
question, and then realising this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another
glass of beer. "I'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he
said to Porson.

"But it's about new moon now," objected Porson. "There