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His look was modest but independent; and Marguerite had the same look. "Hallo!" cried George. "I see you've got that here!" He pointed to Celia Agg's portrait of herself as Bonnie Prince Charlie. "Yes," said Marguerite. "She insisted on me taking it when she gave up painting." "Gave up painting?" "Very good, isn't it?" said Mr. Prince gravely.
With pins in her mouth she said something about the luggage to Marguerite. "All right! All right!" George surrendered gloomily. In truth he was not sorry to let Marguerite depart solitary. And Agg's demeanour was very peculiar; he would have been almost afraid to be too obstinate in denying her request.
It showed Agg, glass in hand, as a leering, tottering young drunkard in frills and velvet. The face was odious, but it did strongly resemble Agg's face. The hair was replaced by a bag wig. "Who did that?" "I did, of course," said Agg. She pointed to the large mirror at the opposite side of the studio. "The dickens you did!" George murmured, struck.
We could see, down the long slope of the road, my driver surrendering his seat to Hinchcliffe, while the car flickered generously from hedge to hedge. "What happens if he upsets?" "The petrol will light up and the boiler may blow up." "How rambunkshus! And" Pyecroft blew a slow cloud "Agg's about three hoops up this mornin', too." "What's that to do with us? He's gone down the road," I retorted.
Nothing of all this did he impart to her as she hung supported and inspiring on his arm. He held it all in reserve for her. And then, thinking again for a moment of what she had said about Agg's liking for him, he thought of Agg's picture and of Marguerite's design which had originated the picture.
I prodded him warningly from behind, and laid the other hand on Pyecroft's stiffening knee. "Also on information received drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car to the common danger two men like sailors in appearance," the man went on. "Like sailors! ... That's Agg's little roose. No wonder he smiled at us," said Pyecroft.
"Not the sort of child," said Miss Agg, who had strong views about children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas, "not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from." It may be quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort. But it was not Miss Agg's contempt for his experiences that worried Bim.
He had been victimized. Agg's warnings and injunctions were ridiculous. What could he have done that he had not done? Run away with Marguerite, carry her off? Silly! No, he was well out of the affair. He perceived the limitations of the world in which Marguerite lived. It was a world too small and too austere for him.
He knew that she was thinking of her infernal father, and he would not have it. He remembered all that Agg had said. Assuredly Agg had shown nerve, too much nerve, to tackle him in the way she did, and the more he reflected upon Agg's interference the more he resented it as impertinent. Still, Agg had happened to talk sense. "Oh, nothing!" Marguerite agreed quickly, fearfully.
He took a hansom, after saying he would walk; he was too impatient for walking. Possibly Marguerite would be at the studio; possibly a letter of hers had miscarried; letters did miscarry. He was in a state of peculiar excitement as he paid the cabman an enigma to himself. The studio was quite dark. Other studios showed lights, but not Agg's.
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