“Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn’t think of leaving Mr. Magister.”

“All right,” said Joe. “But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn’t Art. But you’re a trump and a dear[24] to do it.”

“When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard,” said Delia.

“Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park,” said Joe. “And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a wealthy idiot sees them.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Delia, sweetly. “And now let’s be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast.”

During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, praised and kissed at 7 o’clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o’clock when he returned in the evening.

At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but weary, triumphantly tossed three five-dollar bills on the table.

“Sometimes,” she said, “Clementina exhausts me. I’m afraid she doesn’t practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano – he is a widower, you know – and stands there pulling his white goatee. ‘And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers[25] progressing?’ he always asks.

“Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and highbred. Gen. Pinkney’s brother was once Minister to Bolivia.”

And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one, and laid them beside Delia’s earnings.

“Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria,” he announced.

“Don’t joke with me,” said Delia, “not from Peoria!”

“All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen scarf. He saw the sketch in Tinkle’s window and thought it was a windmill at first. He bought it anyhow, though. He ordered another one to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it.”

“I’m so glad you’ve kept on,” said Delia, heartily. “You’re bound to win, dear. Thirty – three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have oysters tonight.”

“ And filet mignon with champignons,” said Joe. “Where is the olive fork?”

On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.

Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.

“How is this?” asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously.

“Clementina,” she explained, “insisted upon a Welsh rabbit[26] after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. I know Clementina isn’t in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney! – Joe, that old man nearly went distracted.[27] He rushed downstairs and sent somebody – they said the furnaceman