an air of fatted peace. Result, military tailor's pattern-plate. Price, thank
Heaven, twice as much as for the first sketch, which was moderately
decent.'

'And do you suppose you're going to give that thing out as your work?'

'Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred, home-bred
Art and Dickenson's Weekly.'

Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict,
delivered from rolling clouds: 'If you were only a mass of blathering
vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,--I'd let you go to the deuce on your own
mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that
to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old
girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf. Thus!'

The canvas ripped as Torpenhow's booted foot shot through it, and the
terrier jumped down, thinking rats were about.

'If you have any bad language to use, use it. You have not. I continue.

You are an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough to take
liberties with his public, even though they be--which they ain't--all you
say they are.'

'But they don't know any better. What can you expect from creatures
born and bred in this light?' Dick pointed to the yellow fog. 'If they want
furniture-polish, let them have furniture-polish, so long as they pay for it.

They are only men and women. You talk as if they were gods.'