"He's a renegade," declared Little O'Grady. "But never mind; we like him all the same. Some day he may be glad to leave the Temple and come back to us again at the Warren. That'll be all right. We'll welcome him; we'll share our last mouthful of excelsior with him." Little O'Grady gave another joyful kick into the air. "Well, his room didn't stay empty long; Gowan moved down right away, and a new man took Gowan's room only day before yesterday--so old Ezekiel won't lose more'n about fourteen dollars' rent, after all. Chap's got his name out already: Ignace Pr--Pr----Well, anyway, it begins with a P. He makes rattling strong coffee, by the smell, and tinkles now and then on the thing-a-ma-jig. They say he's terrible smart--full of the real old stuff." "Has Gowan been thinking up anything in particular?" "Well, he's thinking he sees that money piled up in the bank vaults. We all do. And we want to get at it. Say, great thing to be working for a bank, eh? No flighty, shilly-shallying, notional women, but a lot of steady, sober business-men who'll make a good straight contract and keep it. No saying, 'Well, my daughter doesn't altogether fancy this,' or, 'I will take your sketches home to my husband and we will think about them,'--and then never telling us _what_ they think. Sure pay, too. And prompt, as well. Quarter down, let us say, on submitting the general scheme of decoration; another quarter as soon as we begin actual work----Yes, sir, I almost feel as if I saw my way to meat once a day right through the week!" VI "Then I don't see but that he is about the man for us," said Roscoe Orlando Gibbons;--"at least he seems to provide a point for us to start from." Jeremiah McNulty rescued some loose memoranda from the absent-minded pokings of his caller's plump forefinger and scratched his chin. "You were pretty favourably impressed, weren't you?" asked Roscoe Orlando, leaning forward across the corner of the other's desk. "_I_ was. I thought he had something in him, and something behind him. Seemed to me like a very dependable chap--for one in that line. These artists, you know,--erratic, notional, irresponsible. You never feel sure how you have them; you can't treat with them as you can with a downright, sensible, methodical business-man. I assure you I've heard the most astonishing tales about them. There's Whistley, for example--sort of sharp, perverse spoiled child, I should say. And the time my own brother-in-law had over the portrait painted by that man from Sweden! We've got to make up our minds to be patient with them, to humour them. But Dill, now----" Roscoe Orlando Gibbons ran his fingers through his graying whiskers and waited for Jeremiah's belated observation.