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She brought with her, and dangled before their wondering gaze, a suit of paint-stained overalls, jumper and all, that evidently by their size belonged to Henry, the boatkeeper and man of all work of Lakeview Hall. "I hid 'em the other day," declared the red-haired girl. "You never know what may happen, or how such garments as these may come in use."
"I asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here. But I can go away again." Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its frilly frock photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes, that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her. "I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love." "Yes, oh! yes! That's nothing!"
"I speak also French, papa." "Well, my child! You will like to come out with papa, and Betsy can dress you." He flings off his own paint-stained shooting-jacket as he talks, takes a frock-coat out of a carved wardrobe, and a hat from a helmet on the shelf. He is no longer the handsome splendid boy of old times. Can that be Clive, with that haggard face and slouched handkerchief?
Vandover had worn an old paint-stained pair of blue trousers, fastened with a strap, so that his shirt showed below his vest; he had no collar, and he had allowed his beard to grow, a straggling thin beard, through which one could see the buttons of his shirt, a dirty beard full of the cracker crumbs from the free lunch-counters of cheap saloons; he had on a hat which he had worn when they had known him; but one should see that hat now!
On a small paint-stained table in the centre was an oil-lamp beneath a round shade that had been decorated by some artist's hand with a series of reclining women in many colours. This lamp made a moon in the midnight of the studio, but it was a moon almost without rays; the shade seemed to imprison the light, save that which escaped from its superior orifice.
"He's probably very happy. Now run away and come again on Saturday." She waved a paint-stained rag at him and turned again to the picture. Obediently he started towards the door, then hesitated, glancing irresolutely at Craven, and tip-toed back to the easel.
In spite of the solemnity of the moment, I couldn't help laughing when he appeared, for disdaining the immaculate costume I had carefully laid out, he had put on a most disreputable-looking pair of trousers, and an old paint-stained Norfolk jacket.
To redeem a little the departed glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl of red roses. This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad workroom.
"And how have things gone to-day?" said Mr. Brown cheerfully. "Thank heaven William goes to school to-morrow," said Ethel devoutly. Upstairs in his room William was studying himself in the glass torn jersey, paint-stained trousers, blackened face. "Well," he said with a deep sigh of satisfaction, "I guess I've jolly well helped to-day!" William's family were going to the seaside for February.
Trina let her paint-stained hands fall into her lap. "OH!" she cried. "If we don't have the HARDEST luck of any two people I ever heard of. What can you do now? Is there another place like that where they make surgical instruments?" "Huh? No, I don' know. There's three more." "Well, you must try them right away. Go down there right now." "Huh? Right now? No, I'm tired.
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