"Didn't want 'em, eh?" cried Jack, throwing himself on to the divan, temporarily exhausted with the labor of hanging the lamp and attaching the tassel. "Wanted something painted with darning-needle brushes--little tooty-wooty stuff that everybody can understand. 'See the barndoor and the nails in the planks and all them knots!'"--Jack was on his feet now, imitating the drawl of the country art-buyer--"'Ain't them natural! Why, Maria, if you look close ye can see jes' where the ants crawl in and out. My, ain't that wonderful!'" These remarks were not addressed to the offending canvas nor to the imaginary countryman, but to his chum, Sam Ruggles, who sat hunched up in a big armchair with gilt flambeaux on each corner of its high back--it being a holiday and Sam's time his own. Ruggles was entry clerk in a downtown store, lived on fifteen dollars a week, and was proud of it. His daily fear--he being of an eminently economical and practical turn of mind--was that Jack would one day find either himself tight shut in the lock-up in charge of the jailer or his belongings strewed loose on the sidewalk and in charge of the sheriff. They had been college mates together--these two--and Sam loved Jack with an affection in which pride in his genius and fear for his welfare were so closely interwoven, that Sam found himself most of the time in a constantly unhappy frame of mind. Why Jack should continue to buy things he couldn't pay for, instead of painting pictures which one day somebody would want, and at fabulous prices, too, was one thing he could never get through his head. "Where have those pictures been, Jack?" inquired Sam, in a sympathetic tone. "Oh, out in one of those God's-free-air towns where they are studying high art and microbes and Browning--one of those towns where you can find a woman's club on every corner and not a drop of anything to drink outside of a drug-store. Why aren't you a millionnaire, Sam, with a gallery one hundred by fifty opening into your conservatory, and its centre panels filled with the works of that distinguished impressionist, John Somerset Waldo, R.A.?" "I shall be a millionnaire before you get to be R.A.," answered Sam, with some emphasis, "if you don't buckle down to work, old man, and bring out what's in you--and stop spending your allowance on a lot of things that you don't want any more than a cow wants two tails. Now, what in the name of common-sense did you buy that lamp for which you have just hung? It doesn't light anything, and if it did, this is a garret, not a church. To my mind it's as much out of place here as that brass coal-hod you've got over there would be on a cathedral altar."