When
his favorite enemy was out of sight, he turned away, and indulged
himself in a brisk turn or two up and down the room. Meanwhile I
lifted my canvas on the easel, and was on the point of asking him
to sit down, when he assailed me again.
"Now, Mr. Artist," he cried, quickening his walk impatiently, "in
the interests of the Town Council, your employers, allow me to
ask you for the last time when you are going to begin?"
"And allow me, Mr. Boxsious, in the interest of the Town Council
also," said I, "to ask you if your notion of the proper way of
sitting for your portrait is to walk about the room!"
"Aha! well put--devilish well put!" returned Mr. Boxsious;
"that's the only sensible thing you have said since you entered
my house; I begin to like you already." With these words he
nodded at me approvingly, and jumped into the high chair that I
had placed for him with the alacrity of a young man.
"I say, Mr. Artist," he went on, when I had put him into the
right position (he insisted on the front view of his face being
taken, because the Town Council would get the most for their
money in that way), "you don't have many such good jobs as this,
do you?"
"Not many," I said. "I should not be a poor man if commissions
for life-size portraits often fell in my way."
"You poor!" exclaimed Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously. "I dispute
that point with you at the outset.
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