‘Well,’ said I to Sinfi, ’that’s the first time I ever saw a painter shaven and dressed in a coat like a Quaker’s.’

Sinfi looked across at the speaker through the curling smoke from my pipe, gave a start of surprise, and then said:  ’So you’ve never seed him?  That’s because you’re a country Johnny, brother, and don’t know nothink about Londra life.  That’s a friend o’ mine from Londra as has painted me many’s the time.’

‘Painted you?’ I said; ’the man in black, with the goggle eyes, squatting there under the white umbrella?  What’s his name?’

‘That’s the cel’erated Mr. Wilderspin, an’ he’s painted me many’s the time, an’ a rare rum ’un he is too.  Dordi! it makes me laugh to think on him.  Most Gorgios is mad, more or less, but he’s the maddest ’un I ever know’d.’

We had by this time got close to the painter’s companion, who, sitting upright on his camp-stool, was busy with his brush.  Without shifting his head to look at us, or removing his eyes from his work, he said, in a voice of striking power and volume:  ’Nothing but an imperfect experience of life, Lady Sinfi, could have made you pronounce our friend there to be the maddest Gorgio living.’

‘Dordi!’ exclaimed Sinfi, turning sharply round in great astonishment.  ‘Fancy seein’ both on ’em here!’

‘Mad our friend is, no doubt, Lady Sinfi,’ said the painter, without looking round, ’but not so mad as certain illustrious Gorgios I could name, some of them born legislators and some of them (apparently) born.  R.A.’s.’

‘Who should ha’ thought of seein’ ’em both here?’ said Sinfi again.

‘That,’ said the painter, without even yet turning to look at us or staying the movement of his brush, ’is a remark I never make in a little dot of a world like this, Lady Sinfi, where I expect to see everybody everywhere.  But, my dear Romany chi,’ he continued, now turning slowly round, ’in passing your strictures upon the Gorgio world, you should remember that you belong to a very limited aristocracy, and that your remarks may probably fall upon ears of an entirely inferior and Gorgio convolution.’

‘No offence, I hope.’ said Sinfi.

’Offence in calling the Gorgios mad?  Not the smallest, save that you have distinctly plagiarised from me in your classification of the Gorgio race.’

His companion called out again.  ’Just one moment!  Do come and look at the position of this tree.’

‘In a second, Wilderspin, in a second,’ said the other.  ’An old friend and myself are in the midst of a discussion.’

‘A discussion!’ said the person addressed as Wilderspin.  ’And with whom, pray?’

’With Lady Sinfi Lovell,—­a discussion as to the exact value of your own special kind of madness in relation to the tomfooleries of the Gorgio mind in general.’

‘Kekka! kekka!’ said Sinfi, ‘you shouldn’t have said that.’

’And I was on the point of proving to her ladyship that in these days, when Art has become genteel, and even New Grub Street “decorates” her walls—­when success means not so much painting fine pictures as building fine houses to paint in—­the greatest compliment you can pay to a man of genius is surely to call him either a beggar or a madman.’