Flexor's lodgings, soon to be mistress of his own home. The kind Fates had also been propitious to Mr. Charles Potts, whose picture of "Gil Blas and the Archbishop" had been well placed in the North Room. Mr. Tidd's "Boadicea in her Chariot," ten feet by six, had been rejected; but his portrait of W. Bagglehole, Esq., vestry-clerk of St. Wabash, Little Britain, looked down from the ceiling of the large room and terrified the beholders. So at length arrived that grand day of the year to the Academicians, when they bid certain privileged persons to the private view of the pictures previous to their public exhibition. The _profanum vulgus_, who are odi'd and arceo'd, pine in vain hope of obtaining a ticket for this great occasion. The public press, the members of the Legislature carefully sifted, a set of old dowagers who never bought a sketch, and who scarcely know a picture from a pipkin, and a few distinguished artists,--these are the happy persons who are invited to enter the sacred precincts on this eventful day. Geoffrey Ludlow never had been inside the walls on such an occasion--never expected to be; but on the evening before, as he was sitting in his studio smoking a pipe and thinking that within twenty-four hours he would have Margaret's final decision, looking back over his short acquaintance with her in wonder, looking forward to his future life with her in hope, when a mail-phaeton dashed up to the door, and in the strident tones, "Catch hold, young 'un," shouted to the groom, Geoff recognised the voice of Mr. Stompff, and looking out saw that great capitalist descending from the vehicle. "Hallo, Ludlow!" said Mr. Stompff, entering the studio; "how are you? Quiet pipe after the day's grind? That's your sort! What will I take, you were going to say? Well, I think a little drop of sherry, if you've got it pale and dry,--as, being a man of taste, of course you have. Well, those duffers at the Academy have hung you well, you see! Of course they have. You know how that's done, of course?" "I had hoped that the--" Geoff began to stutter directly it became a personal question with him--"that the--I was going to say that the pictures were good enough to--" "Pictures good enough!--all stuff! pickles! The pictures are good--no use in denying that, and it would be deuced stupid in me, whove bought 'em! But that's not why they're so well hung. My men all on the Hanging-Committee--_twiggez-vous?_ Last year there were two of Caniche's men, and a horrible fellow who paints religious dodges, which no one buys: not one of my men on the line, and half of them turned out I determined to set that right this year, and Ive done it. Just you look where Caniche's men are to-morrow, that's all!" "To-morrow?"