contenting myself with merely thinking about you. It's true I'm not often in New York. Tubby, I'll not lose sight of you now."
Bennington's studio was more a collection of marine objects, a museum of the sea, than a place to work in. There were two rooms at the top of an old brown stone house on the north side of East Thirty-Fourth Street. He had a yearly lease of the place and used it but rarely.
Waking Himself Up
There were quaint figureheads of old sailing ships now long broken up or sunk. Great numbers of fishing rods, with quantities of tackle, littered up shelves and corners. There were guns of assorted caliber and strange weapons brought from stranger lands.
"I have not always led the simple uneventful life Gibbons assigned to me," the painter said smiling, when he noted his friend's interest. "A deep sea painter who tried to put on canvas what Conrad puts in his books has to adventure far afield. Sit down, Tubby, while I make real coffee."
Later, he began: "I had a small fortune when I left Harvard. I spent most of it in seeing the world. With what was left and some small savings I have bought a camp.
"At present I'm hard-up, but there's plenty of money in this very room if I'm energetic enough to get it. I have sold very few of my paintings. I have been able to afford not to. Those I have sold have been to men who understood. I have commissions for a number which I have not filled.
"That was selfish of me. I'll execute them and sell some of these canvases. Your girl Mary shall go to Smith, and your boy shall have the Tech. Seawater and paint shall take them both there. It has been a fortunate evening for me. I needed waking up."
Wrapped in a dressing gown of Bettington’s, Unwin discovered his physical symptoms of high blood pressure diminish. He did not associate the evening coat and waistcoat lying on a chair with this relief.
All he thought of now was how soon this miracle might be accomplished, which should give his children their opportunities. The narrow things at home had trained him to calculate with great niceness such adjustments. Bettington planned to start for the painting expedition within two days' time.
He would start at Gloucester and wander up the coast, reaching his new camp in far Northern Maine in a month's time. It was now in the hands of carpenters and painters. It were wise, he thought, to send Mary to Gibbons's office. The pictures might not sell. Gibbons might offer the girl a splendid stipend. He might seek to make amends for his brusqueness by unexpected kindnesses. Perhaps they had wronged Alfred Gibbons.
Thirty a Week
Unwin was led into moods of unsuspected optimism. He felt he had the courage to win advertising from those who had hitherto thrust his eloquent letters into wastepaper baskets.
Mary looked at him next morning over the breakfast table and her eyes asked the question her lips did not formulate. "Smith must wait just a little," he said, "but don’t be cast down, Mary. There is hope; you will yet win to Northampton. Take an hour off this very day and go and see the great Alfred Gibbons."
"What for?" she asked listlessly.
"He wants to see you. Commercially speaking, your fortune is made. He is expecting you. If I were you," her father added, and spoke as one to whom such matters were made plain, "I would ask not less than thirty dollars a week."
"That would be a great help," she said quietly, "but am I worth that?"
