that's where he made the money this young fellow is to have directly, they say. We old fellows stand in you youngsters' shoes unreasonably long; hey, Clary, my boy?"
"Not in mine, Sir; Heaven forbid!" Mr. Clary says piously and hypocritically.
"Well, well, what were we talking about? Elkhart, the potter. No, young Elkhart—Tom, I think they call him. Instead of making jugs and pots, his turn is for modelling little figures in clay, and very pretty figures, too, if Bridget here is to be credited. Bridget was in their house awhile, were n't you, Bridget?" And Bridget, who, broom in hand, chanced to be slipping through to arrive at a neighboring chamber, stops, nothing loth, and drops a low courtsey. "Sure an' he does," she says, "the beautifullest things iver was seen, Sir. Sure an' did n't he make the Blissed Virgin, Holy Mother of Hiven, out of as much mud—thrue as I'm standing here, Sir—as might go in your tay-cup! And more than that, though not wishing to be mintioned in the same breath, me and my ould blind mother, Sir, the first time we came to the old gintleman's house, my mother houlding me by the hand, and groping with her staff like, and me a-wearing the tore bonnet which the mistress Hannagan gave me in the ould country, sure, and set us up on the mantel-shelf where any body can see us to this blissed day for the asking. An' agin, my own pathron Saint Bridget, which," says Bridget, suddenly dropping a curtsey and her broom, and disappearing to return again presently and take up her sentence where interrupted, "will your honors be pleased to igxamine?"
Now, Mr. Clarence Van Trump, though at the time a fop, and, I am afraid, a little of a roué, was neither a blockhead nor so ignorant of art as most of his compeers. He had not spent all, if he had the greater part, of his time, in Paris in the cafés and hells, or places worse yet, and by mere occasional contact with artists and connoisseurs, had picked up some slight acquaintance with the subject under consideration. Neither was he ill-natured or apt to bear malice, though his self-love had been slightly wounded the evening previous by the young sculptor, or modeller, if you will, having failed to do him homage, I believe. On that occasion he had planned to avenge
