"I'll put it this way: We're in the twentieth century. Between the old masters and us something has happened. What? Why Speed, sir--modern civilisation has discovered Speed. Railways--telegraphs--'phones-- elevators--automobiles--Atlantic records. These inventions, sir"--here as will happen to Americans when they philosophise, Mr. Jessup slipped into an oratorical style--"have altered man's whole environment. Velasquez, sir, was a great artist, and Velasquez could paint, in his day, to beat the band. But I argue that, if you resurrected Velasquez to-day, he'd have to alter his outlook, and everything along with it, right away down to his brush-work. And I go on to argue that if I can't paint like Velasquez--which is a cold fact--it's equally a fact that, if I could, I oughtn't. Speed, sir: that's the great proposition--the principles of Speed as applied to the Fine Arts--" Here he glanced towards the clearing between the willows, where at this moment Tilda reappeared in a hurry, followed--at a sedater pace--by a young woman in a pale blue sunbonnet. "Oh, Arthur Miles, it's just splendid!" she announced, waving a letter in her hand. And with that, noting the boy's attitude, she checked herself and stared suspiciously from him to the artist. "Wot yer doin' to 'im?" she demanded. "Painting his portrait." "Then you didn't ought, an' 'e'd no business to allow it!" She stepped to the canvas, examined it quickly, anxiously, then with a puzzled frown that seemed to relax in a sigh of relief-- "Well, it don't seem as you've done much 'arm as yet. But all the same, you didn't ought." "I want to know what's splendid?" the artist inquired, looking from her to the girl in the sun-bonnet, who blushed rosily. Tilda, for her part, looked at Arthur Miles and to him addressed her answer-- "'Enery's broke it off!" "Oh!" said the boy. He reflected a moment, and added with a bright smile, "And what about Sam?" "It's all 'ere"--she held out the letter; "an' we got to take it to 'im. 'Enery says that waitin's a weary business, but 'e leaves it to 'er; on'y 'e's just found out there's insanity on _'is_ side o' the family. That's a bit 'ard on Sam, o' course; but 'Enery doesn' know about Sam's feelin's. 'E was just tryin' to be tactful." "You'll pardon my curiosity," put in young Mr. Jessup; "but I don't seem to get the hang of this. So far as I figure it up, you two children jump out of nowhere and find yourselves here for the first time in your lives; and before I can paint one of you--and I'm no snail--the other walks into a public-house, freezes on to an absolute stranger, bustles her through one matrimonial affair and has pretty well fixed her with another. As a student of locomotion"--he turned and stared down upon Tilda--"I'd like you to tell me how you did it." "Well," she answered, "I felt a bit nervous at startin'. So I walked straight in an' ordered two-penn'orth o' beer--an' then it all came out."