“By Heaven, this is splendid!” he said. “See the purple, the green, the blue, the brave bronze! See the silver showers of light on the old trees! The toning of the moss and lichen on those walls is enough to make an impotent mortal weep!” Jeffray’s face kindled. He loved the old place, and was glad to hear so blunt a critic as Richard Wilson wax eloquent over the home of his fathers. “You must stay with me, Dick,” he said, warmly. “Can you leave your portrait-painting in town?” “I have given up the flattering of fools,” quoth the painter, almost with a snarl; “and in turn the fools are giving me up. See here, Richard, this is how the gay world treats its servant.” He turned up the tails of his shabby coat, and smiled with a species of rueful bitterness. “English gentlemen like to behold their own smug faces, sir,” he added, “better than waving woods and smiling plains.” Before introducing Wilson to the Lady Letitia in the afternoon, Richard delicately assisted the painter in making his toilet, lending him a frilled shirt, and a green waistcoat that was much too tight for him, and providing him with a pair of Peter Gladden’s buckled shoes. “My aunt is something of a great lady, Dick,” he said, with an apologetic twinkle; “she loves to see a man’s buttons and cravat in order. I am always being scolded for slovenliness and lack of distinction, so to appease her taste I take more trouble with my dress.” The painter, who was worming his huge feet into the butler’s shoes, grimaced at Jeffray, and ran the professional eye over the black-coated figure. “You have not grown fatter, Richard,” he said. “I could still make an Apollo of you in the nude, as I did that day when you bathed at Baiæ. What a graceful trunk, sir!—what a hand and foot! Don’t blush, lad, your lines are splendid, so far as they go, though, on my honor, you are reading too much, to judge by your shoulders. I’ll wager you have set the country nymphs a-simpering, the dear Phœbes. Deuce take these shoes! Is my wig on straight?” “Perfectly,” said Jeffray, with a smile. Wilson expanded his chest, turned out his right foot and knee, put his hand over his heart, and bowed. “How’s that, Richard?” he asked, gravely. “Worthy of St. James’s.” “My professional bow, Richard. I detest it, sir—detest it! The money-getting tricks are not part of my art. I leave them to Mr. Joshua, who could flatter the moon into a trance, as his namesake did in Canaan, and talk the sun into believing that his complexion was not fiery. Now, sir, lead on.”