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The intricacies of getting that letter weighed, properly stamped, and posted were too much for Lewis. He sought aid not from Le Brux, but from Cellette. It took him a long time to explain what he wanted. Cellette stared at him. She seemed so stupid about it that Lewis felt like shaking her again, an impulse that, assisted by memory, he easily curbed.
I let her read a book, when I can, for my own peace. "Well, the boy showed me what he had to show, and that gave me time to collect my wits. I saw him look at Cellette without a tremor, and just as I was deciding to take the moment by the horns, he did it for me. 'Oh, he said, 'are you working on her?
He was introduced as an equal to the haunts of the gay world of embryonic art the only world that has ever solved the problem of being gay without money. From the first he was assumed to belong to Cellette. How much of the assault, the jeers, the buffoonery, the downright evil of initiation, he was saved by this assumption he never knew. Cellette knew, but her tongue was held by shame.
Lewis, with his back to them, was working feverishly at the wet clay piled on a board laid across the backs of two chairs. On Lewis's little bed lay Cellette, front down, her chin in her hand, and reading a book. "Holy name of ten thousand pigs!" murmured Le Brux. Lewis turned. "Why, Dad!" he cried, "I am glad to see you!"
"Just a little nothing from Lewis," said Leighton. "Something to remember him by." "So," said Cellette, gravely. "I understand. He will not come back. It is well." Leighton patted her shoulder. "You are shrewd," he said. Then he added, with a smile: "Too shrewd. He will be back in two months." A fiacre carried them beyond the fortifications.
Leighton's heart was in the grip he gave the boy's hand so frankly held out. "Maître," remarked Cellette from the bed, "believe me if you can: he is still a babe." "A babe!" cried Le Brux, catching Lewis with finger and thumb and lifting him away from the board. "I should say he is. Here!" He caught up chunks of wet clay and hurled them at Lewis's dainty model of Cellette.
These waters are miasmic. They are full of snakes, too. It was just now that I stepped on one." "Snakes, eh?" said Cellette, pausing again. "I don't believe you. But snakes!" She shuddered, and then looked as though she were going to cry with disappointment. "Don't you mind just this once, Cellette," cried Lewis, blowing like a walrus as he held his place against the current.
They held Cellette's hands on the oars and she tried to row, but not for long. She said that by her faith it was harder than washing somebody else's clothes. They chose the shade of a great beech for their picnic-ground. Cellette ordered them to one side, and started to unpack the lunch-basket that had come with Leighton from his hotel.
As each item was revealed she cast a sidelong glance at Leighton. "My old one," she said to him when all was properly laid out, "do not play at youth and innocence any longer. It takes an old sinner to order such a breakfast." It was a gay meal and a good one, and, like all good meals, led to drowsiness. Cellette made a pillow of Lewis's coat and slept. The afternoon was very hot.
"What do you say," he went on, "to a little trip all by ourselves again?" "It would be splendid," said Lewis, eagerly. Then, after a pause: "It would be fun if we could take Cellette along, too. She'd like it a lot, I know." "Yes," said Leighton, dryly, "I don't doubt she would." He seemed to ponder over the point. "No," he said finally, "it wouldn't do.
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