"Stop, you beggar!" cried Jack Stirling. "Don't let him get loose again, Marny! Stuff a pipe in his mouth. Boggs, you are the only man I know who can start his mouth going and go away and leave it. Here, fellows, get on your feet and line up and receive the spoilt child of fashion. He's coming upstairs: I know his step." At this instant Woods's body was thrust around the jamb of the door. He still wore the rose in his button-hole, the one Miss B. J.--the original of the portrait--had pinned there. Mac sprang up and caught the intruder by the shoulders before he had time to open his mouth. "Been having a tea, have you, you gilt-edged fraud! A highly perfumed powder-puff tea, with lace on the edges and two flounces. 'Oh, how exquisite, dear Mr. Woods! And is it really all hand-painted? and did you do it all yourself? How enormously clever you are--How lovely--How--' Got pretty sick of that sort of taffy after they had gormed you up with it for three hours, didn't you, Woods? and you had to come up where you could breathe! Now rip off that undertaker's coat, throw away that rose, get into that sketching jacket, and sit down here and disinfect yourself with a pipe--" and Mac's hearty laugh rang through the room. PART IX _Around the Embers of the Dying Fire._ Spring had come. The trees in the old Square were tuneful with impatient birds ready to move in and begin housekeeping as soon as the buds poked their yellow heads out of their nestings of bark. The eager sun, who had been trying all winter to gain the corner of Mac's studio window, had finally carried the sash and grimy pane by assault: its beams were now basking on the Daghestan rug in full defiance of the smouldering coals crouching half-dead in their bed of ashes. [Illustration: Around the embers of the dying fire.] From an open window--Mac had thrown it wide--came a breath of summer air, telling of green fields and fleecy clouds; of lappings about the bows of canoes; of balsam beds under bark slants; of white scoured decks and dancing waves; of queer cafés under cool arched trees and snowy peaks against the blue. The glorious old fire felt the sun's power and shuddered, trembling with an ill-defined fear. It knew its days were numbered, perhaps its hours. No more romping and sky-larking; no more outbursts of crackling laughter; no more scurrying up the ghostly chimney, the madcap sparks playing hide-and-seek in the soot; no more hugging close of the old logs, warming themselves and everybody about them; no more jolly nights with the hearth swept and the pipes lighted, the faces of the smokers aglow with the radiance of the cheery blaze.