“I am glad you think so,” said Lenorme, with entire courtesy.--It was not merely that the very doubtful recognition of his profession by society had tended to keep him clear of his prejudices, but both as a painter and a man he found the young fellow exceedingly attractive;--as a painter from the rare combination of such strength with such beauty, and as a man from a certain yet rarer clarity of nature which to the vulgar observer seems fatuity until he has to encounter it in action, when the contrast is like meeting a thunderbolt. Naturally the dishonest takes the honest for a fool. Beyond his understanding, he imagines him beneath it. But Lenorme, although so much more a man of the world, was able in a measure to look into Malcolm and appreciate him. His nature and his art combined in enabling him to do this. “You see, sir,” Malcolm went on, encouraged by the simplicity of Lenorme’s manner, “if they were nothing like us, how should we be able to get on with them at all, teach them anything, or come a hair nearer them, do what we might? For all her wickedness I firmly believe Kelpie has a sort of regard for me--I won’t call it affection, but perhaps it comes as near that as may be possible in the time to one of her temper.” “Now I hope you will permit me, Mr MacPhail,” said Lenorme, who had been paying more attention to Malcolm than to his words, “to give a violent wrench to the conversation, and turn it upon yourself. You can’t be surprised, and I hope you will not be annoyed, if I say you strike one as not altogether like your calling. No London groom I have ever spoken to, in the least resembles you. How is it?” “I hope you don’t mean to imply, sir, that I don’t know my business,” returned Malcolm, laughing. “Anything but that! It were nearer the thing to say, that for all I know you may understand mine as well.” “I wish I did, sir. Except the pictures at Lossie House and those in Portland Place, I’ve never seen one in my life. About most of them I must say I find it hard to imagine what better the world is for them. Mr Graham says that no work that doesn’t tend to make the world better makes it richer. If he were a heathen, he says, he would build a temple to Ses, the sister of Psyche.” “Ses?--I don’t remember her,” said Lenorme. “The moth, sir;--‘the moth and the rust,’ you know.” “Yes, yes; now I know! Capital! Only more things may tend to make the world better than some people think.--Who is this Mr Graham of yours? He must be no common man.” “You are right there, sir; there is not another like him in the whole world, I believe.” And thereupon Malcolm set himself to give the painter an idea of the schoolmaster. When they had talked about him for a little while, “Well, all this accounts for your being a scholar,” said Lenorme; “but----” “I am little enough of that, sir,” interrupted Malcolm. “Any Scotch boy that likes to learn finds the way open to him.”