“It isn’t a fool,” said Tommy, buttoning the belt of his Norfolk jacket, as if to brace himself to the encounter. “It’s my uncle.” “Lord save us!” said Clementina. “I thought I would give you a surprise,” said Tommy. Clementina shrugged her shoulders and went on squeezing paint out of tubes. “He must have softening of the brain.” “Why?” “First for wanting to have his portrait painted at all, and secondly for thinking of coming to me. Go back and tell him I’m not a caricaturist.” Tommy planted a painting-stool in the middle of the floor and sat upon it, with legs apart. “Let us talk business, Clementina. In the first place, he has nothing to do with it. He doesn’t want his portrait painted, bless you. It’s the other prehistoric fossils he foregathers with. I met chunks of them at dinner last night. They belong to the Anthropological Society, you know, they fool around with antediluvian stones and bones and bits of iron—and my uncle’s president. They want to have his portrait to hang up in the cave where they meet. They were talking about it at my end of the table. They didn’t know what painter to go to, so they consulted me. My uncle had introduced me as an artist, you know, and they looked on me as a sort of young prophet. I asked them how much they were prepared to give. They said about five hundred pounds—they evidently have a lot of money to throw about—one of them, all over gold chains and rings, seemed to perspire money, looked like a bucket-shop keeper. I think it’s he who is presenting the Society with the portrait. Anyway that’s about your figure, so I said there was only one person to paint my uncle and that was Clementina Wing. It struck them as a brilliant idea, and the end of it was that they told my uncle and requested me to sound you on the matter. I’ve sounded.” She looked at his confident boyish face, and uttered a grim sound, halfway between a laugh and a sniff, which was her nearest approach to exhibition of mirth, and might have betokened amusement or pity or contempt or any two of these taken together or the three combined. Then she turned away and, screwing up her eyes, looked out for a few moments into the sodden back garden. “Did you ever hear of a barber refusing to shave a man because he didn’t like the shape of his whiskers?” “Only one,” said Tommy, “and he cut the man’s throat from ear to ear with the razor.” He laughed loud at his own jest, and, going up to the window where Clementina stood with her back to him, laid a hand on her shoulder. “That means you’ll do it.” “Guineas, not pounds,” said Clementina, facing him. “Five hundred guineas. I couldn’t endure Ephraim Quixtus for less.” “Leave it to me, I’ll fix it up. So long.” He ran up the spiral staircase, in high good-humour. On the gallery he paused and leaned over the balustrade. “I say, Clementina, if the ugly young man calls to-day for that pretty Miss Etta, and you want any murdering done, send for me.”