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We want you to suggest some way by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer's acquaintance without getting on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?" "Perfectly, sir." "Well, try to think of something." "I have thought of something already, sir." "You have!"
He was fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this, however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the way the above Worple used to harry him. Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't think he had any talent in that direction.
"It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr. Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I have mentioned." "Oh! Well?" Worple!
Apparently you could do what you liked with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
Corcoran looks into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is always a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable one, sir. Mr. Corcoran's portrait may not have pleased Mr.
Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable."
One place, a large house in one of the precipitous roads leading from the Ridgeway to the Worple Road, was, perhaps, rather too open for his requirements, but its appointments were perfect, and at his bidding I plied the lady of the house with innumerable questions about plate, linen, and garden produce, the servants she offered to leave behind her, and so forth.
Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance. He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple was peculiar in this respect.
Worple as a likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr. Corcoran will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been for the humorous. There is something about this picture something bold and vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly popular."
Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the comic papers he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good idea and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the ear of a rich uncle one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business.
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