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"A letter from Cecil," said Bill as I took my seat, a little downcast at the encounter. Cecil is the painter-cousin, at Wigborough, Essex, England. "What does he say?" I inquired. "Read it to us," said she, and handed me a dozen sheets of tracing paper pinned together. I began to read. Dear Bill, At last I find myself with an hour or so to spare, so here goes! How are you all? Well, I hope.
Mac was crouching over an etching by the window, a big magnifying glass in his hand. I went over to him and he rose and handed the print to me. "Oh!" I said. "This is indeed apropos." It was an etching, by the painter-cousin, of the wrecked aeroplane of which he had spoken.
Imagine a man like Frank living next door say, a man who has known Rosa, as I told you ... See?" As we stepped upon the ferry I noticed that his features were sharp and bore the impress of a quite unusual secret care, I felt guiltily that we had been unwise to tell so much to the painter-cousin.
Our friends, even the painter-cousin, could not understand that we did not dislike America. They were misled by our occasional and quite natural sighs for a sight of the quiet English landscape, and our joking remarks about the customs regulations. So we stayed and fought, with our backs to the not over-clean walls of 118th Street.
I submitted to this badinage and even hinted that at first we should need but one chair.... I had heard ... nay seen, such things in San Francisco, before the earthquake. In the meantime I had vamped up a very pretty story of the painter-cousin getting a commission to paint a prima-donna in New York and coming over to visit us in great state. He might be induced to sit awhile in the vacant chair.
"It must be grand," she had told me in Lexington Avenue, "to be a grisette." We had admitted that it must, but had been unable to share her regret that she had not been a man "so that she could see everything." She was very charming as she was. Of course she knew of the painter-cousin and indeed, as soon as she could think of it, gave us the needed opening.
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