of a tumbledown boathouse at Aldergrove, a portrait of Geoffrey Saint in charcoal done four years since, a half finished sketch of the naked girl in the rue de la Grande Chaumière, several studies of the rooftops in the rue Truffaut, a water color of a wineshop at Chartres (he had meant to do the cathedral!), and other odds and ends.
It was a strain to watch Casimir's noncommital face as he turned from sketch to sketch, and Grover was positively shocked to find which two the master had set aside for closer inspection. The first was a whimsical drawing he had once made from the window of his rooms at Harvard: the brick campanile of a newly erected Roman Catholic church, with a row of saucy birds singing like mad and thereby attempting to drown the pious sound of the bells. The second was the lazy series of sketches of the overfed cat at Suresnes which he had absent-mindedly drawn on the afternoon when his Muse had proved so recalcitrant.
The sketch of the birds and the belfry he had almost decided not to include because of its peculiar personal quality, a quality which he feared would seem trivial to other eyes. The tower had an aggressive slant, as though it were bigotry personified, and the birds were not Massachusetts birds at all, but a flock of winged little Thanets, scolding God in the terms of a Harvard senior, Yet the drawing was more than a caricature: the clouds and the branches, though inadequately ren-
