And Mr. Upjohn, with spasmodic movements, jerked the two easels round to the wall. There was a short pause in the conversation. Mr. Upjohn irritatedly cast himself at full length upon a sofa, and spasmodically ate candied apricots. He placed them in his mouth with his forefinger and thumb, holding his elbow at a right angle to his body, with his chin far extended; and bit them savagely in half. George watched this impressive and barbaric spectacle with the interest of one who at last discovers the meaning of the mysterious rite of Urim and Thummim. A timid effort at making conversation was repelled by Mr. Upjohn, with a gesture which George interpreted as meaning that Mr. Upjohn required complete silence to digest and sweeten with candied apricots the memory of George’s treasonable obtuseness. Suddenly George started, for Mr. Upjohn, after coughing once or twice, swung himself from his couch with incredible swiftness, hawked vigorously, flung open a window with unnecessary violence and spat voluminously into the street. He then turned and said calmly: “You’d better come along to fat Shobbe’s.” George, who was young enough to enjoy going to miscellaneous parties, gratefully acquiesced; and was still further gratified by being allowed to witness the strange and complex ablutions performed by Mr. Upjohn from a wash-basin startlingly concealed in a veneered mahogany tail-boy. Mr. Upjohn was evidently a very clean man, at least in those portions of his body exposed to the public gaze. He washed and rinsed his face thoroughly, brushed his teeth until George apprehended lest the bristles be worn to the bone, gargled and spat freely. He soaped and pumiced his hands, which were large, yellow and slightly spatulate; and excavated his nails with singular industry and pertinacity. He then sat down before a folding table-mirror in three parts, which reflected both profiles as well as full-face and combed and brushed and re-brushed and re-combed his coarse hay-like hair until it crackled with induced electricity. When Mr. Upjohn judged that hygiene and beauty-culture had received their full due, he arrayed himself in a clean collar, a tie of remarkable lustre and size, and a narrow-waisted rather long coat which, taken in conjunction with the worn but elegant peg-top trousers he had on, gave him a pleasantly rake-helly and Regency look. This singular scene, which occupied the better part of an hour, was conducted by Mr. Upjohn with great gravity, varied by the emission of a singular and discordant chant or hum, and wild petulant oaths whenever any object of the toilet or of his apparel did not instantly present itself to his hand. Oddly enough, Mr. Upjohn was not a sodomist. He was a professedly ardent admirer of what our ignorant forefathers called the soft sex. Mr. Upjohn often asserted that after the immense toils of Suprematist painting nothing could rest him but the presence of several beautiful women.