Across the court there came a trill, then a burst of song, a roulade of sheer joy such as is always pleasant to intercept, but particularly so when you happen to be in the youth of life and the youth of the year. Hugh looked up. In the opposite window was a girl—a pretty girl; yet when I say pretty I mean that prettiness which, when you see it, makes you want to jump straight down the possessor’s throat. It was the prettiness that comes with the eighteenth year to a girl who has blue eyes, kissable lips and a complexion of roses and cream.
When Hugh looked up the trill trembled and ceased. Four eyes had met. Hugh smiled, which was impertinent of him; the girl blushed, which was modest of her; then an old man appeared, one who neither blushed nor smiled, who looked exceeding cross and shut the window with a bang.
“Caesar, what a beauty!” Hugh exclaimed, and turned to the sigma once more. In a moment he looked across the court. The window was blank. “I wonder,” he mused, and whistled softly to himself; “I wonder if I haven’t got too much ochre stuck on there.” He looked again at the window across the court. “Bah!” he continued, “as if I could have too much ochre. It’s the purple on the laticlave that jars.”
For a little space he painted away very determinedly, the muscles of his jaw close set; then he looked again at the window—there was no one, not even the cross old man.
“Oh, hang it all,” he cried. “I can’t work any more today!”
When an agile young fellow wants to, it doesn’t take him very long to get down six flights of stairs—no, nor seven, either, however steep those stairs may be—and presently Hugh entered a dingy den over which the janitress of the building presided.
The janitress was a fat person, with the voice of an ogre, and a great love for gossip and tenants who paid their way. Hugh never gossiped, but he had a smile which had won her heart, all ogress that she was. She laughed as he entered and flourished a broom.
“Mrs. O’Hassadam,” he began, “you are looking very handsome this morning. I—”
“Don’t be flattering an old lady like meself, Mr. Hyrtl, but say to me just plainly what you want, with no nonsense whatever.”
“Then, Mrs. O’Hassadam, as you love righteousness and abhor mammon, tell me who those people are that live up there on the other side of the court, yes, on the sixth story where the geranium is?”
“No great shakes, Mr. Hyrtl.”
“What!”
“No great shakes, Mr. Hyrtl.”
“But the girl?”
“No great shakes, I keep telling you; a gadabout, that’s what she is, with an ex-convict for a pa.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” cried Hugh, indignantly, “no, not one word.”
“Question a lady’s veracity, Mr. Hyrtl? Where are your manners, Mr. Hyrtl. Mr. Hyrtl, mind what I am telling you. For ten years that old forger has been here, and, since I can remember, not a letter has come for him whatever, not a soul has come to see him and not once has he put his foot out of this door. Question a lady’s word!”
“But—”
“It’s a murderer he is, I am a-thinking, and as for that gal, she’s no better than she should be whatever at all, sitting there where anyone can see her, where I can see her, a-trying to make eyes at you.”
“But—”
“Oh, I know very well you’re forever in your paintbox and pay no attention to likes of her. It’s annoying you, she is, that’s what she’s doing, in a respectable house like this, besides.”
“But—”
“And what is it you want, whatever?” Mrs. O’Hassadam abruptly inquired of a little man, sadly shabby in appearance, who had loomed in the door. “There’s no old bottles today.”
“And if there were I wouldn’t want them,” the little man retorted, defiantly; “unless they were full. It’s lodgings I’m after.”
“It is, is it? Well, then, you’d better try and find them in some nice little place on Fifth Avenue where they’ll only charge you five dollars if you ring the bell and ten dollars if you don’t. This establishment wouldn’t suit you at all.”
And Mrs. O’Hassadam made a skirmish with her broom.
“Lodgings, indeed,” she added, indignantly; “why not chambers, self-contained, with private entrance. Be off, or I’ll call the police. Mr. Hyrtl—”
Hugh had sidled out, pretending not to hear. Presently he was on the sidewalk. Beyond was the Square, deluged by the eager sunlight of a radiant noon; near at hand was a junkshop, and a step or two further on a window in which, temptingly arranged, were coils of sausages, red beefsteak, yellow fowl and a glistening ham. For a second, in sheer perplexity, Hugh stopped; yet, as he loitered there, he saw nothing of the contents of that window—it was what another had held that memory was reproducing, and, as the convolutions of fancy waned and subsided, he found himself staring at the individual whom Mrs. O’Hassadam had ordered to be off.
“Well, sir, do you take me for a freak?”
He was a stout, little man, with a long beard and the restless eyes of a ferret, distressingly shabby, the more so even that in his shabbiness was the unmistakable air of better days.
Hugh started from his reverie.
“Not a bit,” he answered, gently. “I am an artist, and if I stared at you it was because you look like a Roman Senator.”
“Why not a satyr? So you are an artist, eh? Well, where have I seen you before—in Lisbon, Liverpool or Leghorn?”
“Truly,” Hugh answered, “I have never been so far away.”
“You haven’t, haven’t you?” And the little
