Her Faithful Knight — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Moonlight Walk. 17 ‘arf bad some of ’em; but don’t she think a tot of ’erself, that’s all! The others are all ’ugging each other, and kissing, and arm round each other, and telling spiteful stories about each other all day. But she, she don’t take any more notice of ‘em than if they were so many flies. She isn’t my style—too much of the stined glass window line for me. I like something a bit lively, that can cheek you back. But there’s no denying that her modeling’s first rate and her flesh tints simply A 1.” | Aylmer subdued a great longing to take Mr. Smith by the scruff of his neck and summarily eject him from the Museum. In order to divert his sacrilegious talk to some less precious topic he gravely informed his cockney ac- quaintance that he fully intended taking up art as a pro- fession, and relied upon his total inability to draw as his most promising stock in trade. “T shall call myself an impressionist,’ he said. “I shall get a schoolboy nephew of mine, who has a box of paints, - to color my designs. Then I shall put them in eccentric frames, hire a gallery, and give a ‘one man’ show. If I am remonstrated with, I shall say I only paint as I see. The new journalists will discover that I am an artist of strong natural genius and individuality, who has the cour- age to cast aside the trammels and conventions which hamper art in England.” Mr. Smith laughed and winked. The new student wasn’t a bad sort, he decided, and forthwith marked his approval by asking the loan of half a crown. It was pat- ent that the farce of art studies could not be kept up much longer, and that Aylmer’s one object in playing it, the chance of making the acquaintance of the girl in blue, must be speedily accomplished if he wished to spare her fellow students’ chafing comments. Chance, as some would have termed it, or fate, as Ayl- mer himself considered it, unexpectedly assisted him, mGOMIIGIOO “S (E)