"Were you really on exhibition, Lonny?" Mac's impatience never lasts many seconds. The architect nodded, then answered slowly: "Five dinners and a tea." "All rich houses, I suppose?" "Very rich." "And all wanted plans for country seats, of course?" "Some of them--two, I think." "Extra dry champagne, under-done canvas-backs and costly terrapin served every five minutes?" "No. Extra dry canvas-backs, done-over terrapin, and cheap champagne. Served but once, thank God!" "Wore your swell clothes, I presume?" "Yes, swallow-tail on me every night and a head on me every morning," answered Lonnegan with a grave face. "Why do you ask, Mac?" "Oh, just to keep in touch with the history of my country, old man." While the two men talked, Pitkin and Van Brunt walked in--the latter a Dutch painter in New York for the winter, just arrived by steamer. The atmosphere of No. 3 was evidently congenial to the man, for, after a hand-shake all round, the Hollander produced his own pipe, filled it from a leather pouch in his pocket, and sat down before the fire as unconcerned and as contented as if he'd been one of the fire's circle from the day of its lighting. Good Bohemians, so called the world over, have an international code of manners, just as all club men of equal class agree upon certain details of dress and etiquette, no matter what their tongue. The brush, the chisel, the trowel, and the test-tube are so many talismans--open sesames to the whole fraternity. The Hollander had overheard the last half of Mac's sally and Lonnegan's grave rejoinder. "Yes, the terrapin and the canvas-back, I hear much of them. What does a terrapin look like, Mr. Lonnegan?" "A terrapin, Van Brunt," interrupted Boggs, "is a hide-bound little beast that sleeps in the mud, is as ugly as the devil, and can bite a tenpenny nail in two with his teeth when he's awake. When he is boiled and picked clean, and served with Madeira, he is the most toothsome compound known to cookery." "Correctly described, Boggs--'compound' is good," said Lonnegan. "The up-to-date-modern-millionnaire-terrapin, Mr. Van Brunt, is a reptile compounded of glue, chicken-bones, chopped calf's head, and old India-rubber shoes. When ready for use it tastes like flour paste served in hot flannel. I may be wrong about the chopped calf's head, but I'm all right about the India-rubber shoes. I've been eating them this week, and part of a heel is still here"--and he tapped his shirt-front. "And the canvas-back?" continued Van Brunt, laughing. "It is a duck, is it not?" "Occasionally a duck--I speak, of course, of tables where I have dined--but seldom a canvas-back." "And they live in the marshes, I hear, and feed on the wild celery--do they not?" "No; they live in a cold storage six months in the year, and feed on sawdust and ice," replied Lonnegan with the face of a stone god. "Hard life, isn't it?" remarked Boggs to the circle at large. "For the duck?" asked Pitkin.