"Thirty by forty, eh," grunted Jack, from the depths of his chair. "Thunder and Mars! Is the beggar going to paint a panorama? Thought that canvas was for a new cavalry charge of yours!" He had lowered the other leg now, making a double-barrelled gun of the pair. "No; it's Horn's. He's going to paint one of the fellows to-night." "In costume?" Jack's head was now so low in the chair that his eyes could draw a bead along his legs to the fire. "Yes, as an old Burgomaster, or something with a ruff," and he kicked an army blanket into a corner as he spoke. "There's the ruff hanging on that pair of foils, Waller sent it over." Then his merry eyes fell on Jack's sprawled-out figure, his feet almost in the grate--a favorite attitude of his neighbor's when tired out with the day's work, comfortable perhaps, but especially objectionable at the moment. "Here--get up, you old stick-in-the-mud. Don't sit there, doubled up like a government mule," he laughed. (The army lingo still showed itself once in a while in Fred's speech.) "Help me get this room ready or I'll whale you with this," and he waved one end of a trace over his head. "If the fellows are coming they'll be here in half an hour. Shove back that easel and bring in that beer--it's outside the door in a box. I'll get out the tobacco and pipes." Jack stretched both arms above his head, emitted a yawn that could be heard in his room below, and sprang to his feet. Fred, by this time, had taken down from a closet a tin box of crackers, unwrapped a yellow cheese, and was trimming its raw edges with a palette knife. Then they both moved out a big table from the inner room to the larger one, and, while Jack placed the eatables on its bare top, Fred mounted a chair, and began lighting a circle of gas-jets that hung from the ceiling of the skylight. The war-painter was host to-night, and the task of arranging the rooms for the comfort of his fellow-members consequently devolved upon him.