"Very little," said Mr Watkins, "just a snack here and there." "Academy?" "In course. _And_ the Crystal Palace." "Did they hang you well?" said Porson. "Don't rot," said Mr Watkins; "I don't like it." "I mean did they put you in a good place?" "Whadyer mean?" said Mr Watkins suspiciously. "One 'ud think you were trying to make out I'd been put away." Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist; he did not know what being "put away" meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little. "Do you do figure-work at all?" "No, never had a head for figures," said Mr Watkins, "my miss--Mrs Smith, I mean, does all that." "She paints too!" said Porson. "That's rather jolly." "Very," said Mr Watkins, though he really did not think so, and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added, "I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight." "Really!" said Porson. "That's rather a novel idea." "Yes," said Mr Watkins, "I thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night." "What! You don't mean to paint in the open, by night?" "I do, though." "But how will you see your canvas?" "Have a bloomin' cop's--" began Mr Watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then realising this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another glass of beer. "I'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he said to Porson. "But it's about new moon now," objected Porson. "There won't be any moon." "There'll be the house," said Watkins, "at any rate. I'm goin', you see, to paint the house first and the moon afterwards." "Oh!" said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation. "They doo say," said old Durgan, the landlord, who had maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, "as there's no less than three p'licemen from 'Azelworth on dewty every night in the house--'count of this Lady Aveling 'n her jewellery. One'm won fower-and-six last night, off second footman--tossin'." Towards sunset next day Mr Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was observed by Mr Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson's account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art.