Pelgram went by with his arm familiarly passed through that of a phlegmatic-looking young Chinaman whom he led up to Miss Maitland's portrait. Ling Hop had been cook on a yacht, when an artistic friend of Pelgram's and a parasite of the yacht's owner had discovered one day that the guardian of the galley was a fair draughtsman with some little imagination; and much to his own surprise the Oriental had been snatched from the cook stove and thrust into the artistic arena. It was lucky for him that his scene was set in Boston, which is always sympathetically on edge to embrace exotic genius. In a society delicately attuned to intellectual harmonies from all sources, however strange or weird, the success of a Chinaman possessing the slightest facility with the brush was assured from the first. His industrious compatriots in the local laundries, themselves more impassionate critics, doubtless regarded Ling Hop as an impudent charlatan; but Boston in its most restricted and exclusive sense looked at his work with interest and respect, though sadly without humor. The guest stood silently before the portrait, scanning it earnestly, almost with anxiety, blinking his almond eyes behind his shell-rimmed glasses. As, however, he did not know enough about the technique of painting to offer a sensible appreciation, he wisely confined himself to a very few vaguely eulogistic monosyllables, which seemed greatly to gratify the artist. "Ah," said Ling Hop, "delicate--delicate!" the adjective being pronounced with a haunting repetition of its most melodious letter. Years of more or less familiarity with the English language had not been able to efface his racial penchant for the labial. One might naturally suppose that to compress a native alphabet of some one hundred and twenty-six letters into one of twenty-six would result in much confusion and some inexplicable preferences, but no one has ever been able to point out why the functions of the extra hundred should have to be assumed by the letter "l" alone. But to Pelgram the vague liquid sound fell dulcetly on the ear, and by Miss Long and Miss Heatherton no flaw in this art criticism could be discerned. And the artist, glancing about him, saw with gratification that, in addition to the two young ladies, there had by some vague current of motion been swept into his immediate vicinity human flotsam to the extent of perhaps half a dozen irresponsible souls, ignorant that their immediate fate was to be not guests, but auditors.