"Otherwise I shall be satisfied if you will devote yourself, I won't say to admiring it, but to observing it closely for a quarter of an hour."
"And therewith, as by a miracle, the Philistine shall put off his skin and the barbarian wash away his spots; is that the hope? Now, I take this real kind of you, little boy; and it pains me to have to assure you that I am incorrigible: you'll have to put up with me as I am." And twisting up his lips, he joined his pipe to a passing choir:
". . . mahnd 'aow ye ga-ow!
Nahnteen jolly good boys, all in a ra-ow."
There was a pause.
"From four o'clock to-morrow afternoon till a quarter past," resumed the petitioner, gazing fixedly past his guest.
Freddy's blue eyes opened childishly. "What the devil are you up to? " he demanded curiously.
"I have an engagement," stammered the poet. A flow of blood flushed his face and ebbed.
"You had better keep it, I suggest."
"I can't: don't you see? " he wailed, and threw out his hands with a gesture of despair.
"Why? Who's the party? I haven't a dream what you are driving at, I tell you."
"To meet—to meet—the Madonna," he replied desperately. "And you must represent me."
The excitement of the moment lent an unwonted rigidity to the crazy form, which to the young man's eyes, as he looked at him pitifully, seemed to render it yet more lamentable.
"My dear fellow," he remonstrated, "don't you think—seriously, you know you had better knock it off for a bit—the
