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The travelling sign-painter who was repainting the sign of the "Cauliflower" was enjoying a well-earned respite from his labours. On the old table under the shade of the elms mammoth sandwiches and a large slice of cheese waited in an untied handkerchief until such time as his thirst should be satisfied.
"But I knows the points of a oss, and the makings of a pig, if I bean't a sign-painter. And, mark my words, the boy Jan 'ull out-paint Master Linseed yet." Master Chuter spoke with triumph in his tone, but it was the triumph of delivering his sentiments to unopposing hearers.
There is not a redeeming point in a single picture that I saw, not one that would have placed him on a level with the commonest sign-painter in America.
Picture to yourself, Monsieur and Madame," she went on, for she passed Stubbs over, "that this wretched person a dauber, an incompetent, not fit to be a sign-painter receives this morning an admirable offer from an uncle an uncle of my own, my mother's brother, and tenderly beloved of a clerkship with nearly a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and that he picture to yourself! he refuses it!
"I'm Jack Bedford, the sign-painter," he said, heartily. "You and I come from the same town," and as they grasped each other's hands a new friendship was added to Oliver's rapidly increasing list. Oliver's seat was next to Fred, with Jack Bedford on his right. He had asked to join this group not only because he wanted to be near his two friends but because he wanted still more to be near the Milo.
The slighter those peculiarities, the greater is the merit of the limner who can catch them and transfer them to his canvas. To paint Daniel Lambert or the living skeleton, the pig-faced lady or the Siamese twins, so that nobody can mistake them, is an exploit within the reach of a sign-painter.
There crept in the pride of regiment, of locality, which is so characteristically Anglo-Saxon. They change life at the front, these new army men. If a carpenter, a lawyer, a sign-painter, an accountant, is wanted, you have only to speak to a new army battalion commander and one is forthcoming a millionaire, too, for that matter, who gets his shilling a day for serving his country.
"Ammytoor," said the travelled sign-painter. "That be it," said the innkeeper. "A ammytoor. And he was short of money, I fancy, and so 'twas settled a should paint this mare of my father's to set against the bill. And a draad and a squinted at un, and a squinted at un and a draad, and laid the paint on till the pictur' looked all in a mess, and then he took un away to vinish.
"Pardon me of twenty, who is his cousin. That is the real point I would make. You have the best of it. You were right, quite right; but, by St. George, you are a hard hitter! Mr. Wynne would have come in person, but he is hardly fit to be seen, and a sign-painter is just now busy painting his eyelids and cheek, so as to enable him to appear out of doors."
"So she is Miss Martindale, and this young man with a scar has come to see her father on business. He will stay to tea. The father will what will the father do or say? I must look out the name in the directory, so as to get some solid basis of fact about the father, something to avoid, of course, when I arrange him in the story. If he is a stone-cutter I must make him a house- and sign-painter.
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