Under the Skylights

or us," said Roscoe Orlando Gibbons;-"at least h

a from the absent-minded pokings of his call

notional, irresponsible. You never feel sure how you have them; you can't treat with them as you can with a downright, sensible, methodical business-man. I assure you I've heard the most astonishing tales about them. There's Whistley, for example-sort of sharp, perverse spoiled child, I should s

lpless as a cripple on a wide glare of ice, at a cruelly embarrassing disadvantage and wholly at the mercy of that original and anomalous person in the brown Van Dyck beard. Vainly had he cast about for something to lay hold of. None of the people there had he ever seen before; none of the topics bandied about so lightly and carelessly had he ever heard broached before. The sole prop upon which he had tried to repose his sinking spirit had looked indeed like an oak, but had turned out to be merely a broken reed. "That's the only man here," he h

ain from asking his granddaughter. How, he was thinking to himself,-how co

osa had returned repr

great writer. You've

d Jeremiah

is his wife. Isn't it stylish, though?-they're just back from London. Aren't t

his simple old mind. His abashed eyes turned away from her and began to blink at the twinkling candles on the tea-table; it stood there like an altar raised for the celebration of some strange, fearsome ritu

talk in figures; he wouldn't come within a mile of a contract. Instead, he slid about, asking people if they wouldn't have another biscuit, dropping a word to a lady here and there about Pater or Morelli (who

ations Jeremiah haltin

la

ing different on an 'afternoon.' There are occasions when a man must let down, must expand, mu

mmented on Preciosa's naivete in their father's hearing; then Roscoe Orlando, who had never hurt himself by overwork and who was developing a growing wi

r, for I really claim to know what is going on and to keep in touch with the better things. In my own defence I must say that I am an annual membe

e learned that Roscoe Orlando was one of the directors of the Grindstone. Roscoe Orlando declared this with a broad, benevolent smile, accompanied by a confid

over the other visitors present. "I may drift in again before long and look at som

n again, but he was now having the little ch

ther think, after all, that if we were to try to arra

f a square-toed boot against his waste-paper basket. "I

ng less? Don't we want to do something-a big thing, too-that w

hese wily and hardy adventurers had wilfully hit upon him as the weak spot in the defences, as the vulnerable point of the Grindstone. In particular he saw a pair of burning black eyes, a pair of eager, sinewy hands strewing drawings over the pink and gold brocad

nsibility, and no others. We must keep in mind such things as position, reputation, clientele. My partner, for example, once contracted-or tried to-for a large landscape of his stock-farm out beyon

s! Ah, if he could only get that slim young man with the long coat and the pointed beard out on the black-and-white chequered pavement of the Grindstone, fair and square in the

soon not have anything to do with such

a goat a swan; after all, there was no comm

oncluded, "perhaps he would do as

e Orlando. "I'll speak a

ll