Chapter 5 - Page 2

making eyes I'm
not so certain,--Binkie, never you be a man, little dorglums. They're
contrary brutes, and they do things without any reason.'

Dick had turned northward across the Park, but he was walking in the
spirit on the mud-flats with Maisie. He laughed aloud as he remembered
the day when he had decked Amomma's horns with the ham-frills, and
Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him. How long those four years
seemed in review, and how closely Maisie was connected with every hour
of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a gray dress on the beach,
sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and laughing at the
homeward race of the fishing-smacks; hot sunshine on the mud-flats, and
Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying before
the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small shot
about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling lies to
Mrs. Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries; Maisie
picking her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and
her teeth firm-set; and Maisie in a gray dress sitting on the grass
between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy. The
pictures passed before him one by one, and the last stayed the longest.

Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind
as it was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that there
might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in the
forenoon.

'There's a good working light now,' he said, watching his shadow
placidly. 'Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this. And there's
Maisie.'

She was walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no
mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still
Maisie, and, so to speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting passed
between them, because there had been none in the old days.

'What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?' said Dick, as one
who was entitled to ask.

'Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then I left
it in a little heap of paint-chips and came away.'

'I know what palette-knifing means. What was the piccy?'

'A fancy head that wouldn't come right,--horrid thing!'

'I don't like working over scraped paint when I'm doing flesh. The grain
comes up woolly as the paint dries.'

'Not if you scrape properly.' Maisie waved her hand to illustrate her
methods. There was a dab of paint on the white cuff. Dick laughed.

'You're as untidy as ever.'

'That comes well from you. Look at your own cuff.'

'By Jove, yes! It's worse than yours. I don't think we've much altered in
anything. Let's see, though.' He