_Bartlett_, significantly shaking his head.--"Oh, no, no! I said a _pipe_." He rushes to an old studio jacket which the landlady has hung for him on the back of a chair; he dives in one pocket and gets out a pipe, plunges into another and extracts a pouch of tobacco. He softly groans and murmurs with impatience while he makes these explorations. Upon their success: "So lucky Mrs. Ransom brought down that coat. I couldn't have lived to get up-stairs after it!" Stuffing his pipe in a frenzy, he runs to the General for a match; that veteran has already lighted it, and extends it toward him. Bartlett stoops over the flame, pipe in mouth. As the General drops the extinct match upon the floor the painter puffs a great cloud, in which involved he is putting on his studio jacket when Constance appears at the door. He instinctively snatches his pipe from his lips and puts it in his pocket. III. CONSTANCE, BARTLETT, _and_ GENERAL WYATT. _Constance_, fighting her way through the smoke to the General's chair.--"Why, papa, how you _have_ been smoking!" _General Wyatt_, with a queer look.--"Yes, I find it rests me after a bad night. I didn't sleep well." _Constance._--"Oh, poor papa! How do _you_ do, Mr. Bartlett?" She gives him her hand for good-morning. _Bartlett._--"Oh, quite well, quite well _now_, thank you. I--I--had been a little off my--diet." _Constance._--"Oh!" _Bartlett._--"Yes. But I've gone back now, and I'm all right again." He retires to the easel, and mechanically resumes his pipe, but takes it from his mouth again, and after an impatient glance at it, throws it out of the window. "When you're ready, Miss Wyatt, we can begin any time. There's no hurry, though." _Constance._--"I'm ready now. Is everything in reach, papa?" _General Wyatt._--"Yes, my dear. I'm so perfectly comfortable that one touch more would make me miserable." _Constance._--"Can't I do something for you?" _General Wyatt._--"Not a thing. I'm a prodigy of content." _Constance._--"Not lift up this last fold of the chair, so your foot won't rest so heavily on the floor?" _General Wyatt._--"Was it resting heavily? I hadn't noticed. Yes, it was; how you see everything, my dear! Yes"-- Constance stoops to put up the chair to its last extension, and Bartlett runs forward to anticipate her. _Bartlett._--"Miss Wyatt, let me do that!" _Constance._--"No, no! No one must touch papa but me. There, is that right, papa?" _General Wyatt._--"Exactly. That makes me pluperfectly comfortable. I haven't a wish in the world, and all I ask now is to"-- _Constance._--"Get at your newspapers? Let me take off the wrappers for you." _General Wyatt._--"Not on any account." He gently withdraws from her the newspaper she has taken up. "That is truly a kindness that kills. Open my papers for me? I'd as lief you'd put on my hat for me, my dear." _Bartlett._--"That is the one thing that can't be done for any man!"