Mr. Welby was standing before his picture when Laurie went in, looking at it with that intense inspection of the cultivated eye, which no uneducated critic can give. He held out his hand to his visitor, but did not change his attitude. Welby, R.A., had his anxieties about the Academy’s Exhibition as well as another. True, his picture was sure of a place on ‘the line,’ and every advantage a benign Hanging Committee could give it; but there were other dangers before the face of the Academician from which the younger men were safe. Mr. Welby knew that if there was a faltering line in his canvas, or one neglected detail, even the critics who were his friends would say he was growing old. ‘It would ill become us, who are indebted to Mr. Welby for so many noble pictures, to be eager to mark the indications of approaching decadence; but, alas! no man can remain of primitive strength for ever,’ would be the philosophical comment of the ‘Looker-on.’ And the ‘Sword’ would be still sharper in its judgment. Such words as these were echoing in the old painter’s ear as he looked at his picture. He was aware he was old, and life had no such charm to him that he should cling to it unduly,--but such criticisms were hard to bear. He was going over the picture himself, criticising its every detail, and he held up his hand with an unspoken warning to Laurie, who understood, as he had a faculty of doing, and waited behind till the inspection was over. ‘I think that will do,’ said Mr. Welby at last, with a long and deeply-drawn sigh. ‘Come here, Renton, and give me your opinion.’ Laurie was full of the natural instinct of admiring and believing in the work of the old man,--who was leader and patriarch, as it were, of his own special party;--and, besides, it was a fine picture, and he thought it so, though very different no doubt from Suffolk’s ‘Saxon Maiden,’ or from the lovely children in the padrona’s pictures upstairs. Art, to be the everlasting thing it is, is as yet as much bound by fashion as any silly woman. The fashion of the day had changed; but yet old Welby’s picture was a fine picture still. ‘I don’t want those fellows to be picking holes in my coat,’ said the R.A., ‘though of course they will do it all the same.’ ‘I don’t see what holes there are to pick,’ said Laurie, strong in his _esprit de corps_, and ready to swear to the excellence of his master in contradiction of all the critics in the world. ‘We have just sold Suffolk’s picture,’ he added suddenly, glad to deliver himself of the wonderful news, which had been burning holes, as it were, for want of utterance, in his heart.