"Simply because people that would not give you ten shillings for it will
offer you eleven pounds for it if you ask twenty pounds."

"The fules," roared Groove. "Twenty pund! hem!" He looked closer into it.
"For a'," said he, "I begin to obsairve it is a work of great merit. I'll
seek twenty pund, an' I'll no tak less than fifteen schell'n, at
present."

The visit of this routine painter did not cheer our artist.

The small child got a coal and pounded the floor with it like a machine
incapable of fatigue. So the wished-for pose seemed more remote than
ever.

The day waxed darker instead of lighter; Mr. Gatty's reflections took
also a still more somber hue.

"Even Nature spites us," thought he, "because we love her."

"Then cant, tradition, numbers, slang and money are against us; the least
of these is singly a match for truth; we shall die of despair or paint
cobwebs in Bedlam; and I am faint, weary of a hopeless struggle; and one
man's brush is truer than mine, another's is bolder--my hand and eye are
not in tune. Ah! no! I shall never, never, never be a painter."

These last words broke audibly from him as his head went down almost to
his knees.

A hand was placed on his shoulder as a flake of snow falls on the water.
It was Christie Johnstone, radiant, who had glided in unobserved.