"Don't jumble your metaphors, though you very nearly carried it off with
the trough, I own. Stuck pigs don't walk--in troughs, or anywhere else."

"Well, you know what I mean----"

"But what do you want the wretched man to do? He can't speak to you: it
wouldn't be proper----"

"Proper--why not? We're human beings, not wild beasts. At least, I'm a
human being."

"And he's a beast--I see."

"I wish I were a man," said Nina. "There he is again. His nose goes up
another half inch every time he passes me. What's he got to be so
superior about? If I were a man I'd certainly pass the time of day with
a fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend from ten to forty minutes
with it six days out of the seven."

"I expect he's afraid you'd want to marry him. My brother Cecil says men
are always horribly frightened about that."

"Your brother Cecil!" said Nina scornfully. "Yes; that's just the sort
of thing anybody's brother Cecil _would_ say. He simply looks down on me
because I go third. He only goes second himself, too. Here's the
train----"

The two Art students climbed into their third-class carriage, and their
talk, leaving Nina's fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling brook
about the feet of great rocks, busied itself with the old Italian
Masters, painting as a mission, and the aims of Art--presently running
through flatter country and lapping round perspective, foreshortening,
tones, values high lights and the preposterous lisp of the anatomy
lecturer.

Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to
meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of
the platform.

"And we haven't so much as a rib of an umbrella between us," sighed
Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the "best" hat which
signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. "You're right: that
man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of
us. Oh, it's too bad! He's putting it down--he's running. He runs rather
well. He's exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room."

"Only his manners have not that repose that stamps the cast. Come
on--don't stand staring after him like that. We'd better run, too."

"He'll think we're running after him. Oh, bother----"

A moment of indecision, and Nina had turned her skirt over her head, and
the two ran home to the little rooms where Nina lived--in the house of
an old servant. Nina had no world of relations--she w