itself.
Sometimes it was a couple of illustrations to a short story in one of
the minor magazines, sometimes a picture to go with an eulogy of a
patent medicine. Whatever it was, he seized upon it and put into it all
the talent he possessed. And thanks to the indefatigable coaching of
Robert Dwight Penway, a certain merit was beginning to creep into his
work. His drawing was growing firmer. He no longer shirked
difficulties.
Mr. Penway was good enough to approve of his progress. Being free from
any morbid distaste for himself, he attributed that progress to its
proper source. As he said once in a moment of expansive candour, he
could, given a free hand and something to drink and smoke while doing
it, make an artist out of two sticks and a lump of coal.
'Why, I've made you turn out things that are like something on
earth, my boy,' he said proudly. 'And that,' he added, as he reached
out for the bottle of Bourbon which Kirk had provided for him, 'is
going some.'
Kirk was far too grateful to resent the slightly unflattering note a
more spirited man might have detected in the remark.
* * * * *
Only once during those days did Kirk allow himself to weaken and admit
to himself how wretched he was. He was drawing a picture of Steve at
the time, and Steve had the sympathy which encourages weakness in
others.
It was a significant sign of his changed attitude towards his
profession that he was not drawing Steve as a figure in an allegorical
picture or as 'Apollo' or 'The Toiler,' but simply as a well-developed
young man who had had the good sense to support his nether garments
with Middleton's Undeniable Suspenders. The picture, when completed,
would show Steve smirking down at the region of his waist-line and
announcing with pride and satisfaction: 'They're Middleton's!' Kirk was
putting all he knew into the work, and his face, as he drew, was dark
and gloomy.
Steve noted this with concern. He had perceived for some time that Kirk
had changed. He had lost all his old boyish enjoyment of their
sparring-bouts, and he threw the medicine-ball with an absent gloom
almost equal to Bailey's.
It had not occurred to Steve to question Kirk about this. If Kirk had
anything on his mind which he wished to impart he would say it.
Meanwhile, the friendly thing for him to do was to be quiet and pretend
to notice nothing.
It seemed to Steve that nothing was going right these days. Here was
he, chafing at his inability to open his heart to Mamie. Here was Kirk,
obviously in trouble. And, a smaller thing, but of interest, as showing
how universal the present depression was, there was Bailey Bannister,
equally obviously much worried over something or other.
For Bailey had reinstated Steve in the place he had occupied before old
John Bannister had dismissed him, and for some time past Steve had
marked him down as a man with a secret trouble. He had never been of a
riotously cheerful disposition, but it had been possible once to draw
