A small open boat, with a heap of stones for ballast, and with no great elegance in shape of rigging, comes slowly in from the mouth of the harbor, and is gently run alongside the boat in which the man is painting.  A fresh-colored young fellow, with voluminous and curly brown hair, who has dressed himself as a yachtsman, calls out, “Lavender, do you know the White Rose, a big schooner yacht?—­about eighty tons I should think.”

“Yes,” Lavender said, without turning round or taking his eyes off the canvas.

“Whose is she?”

“Lord Newstead’s.”

“Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now and wanted to know whether you were here, I said you were.  The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor.  I said I was.  So he gave me a message for you—­that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you would go out to them and take a run up to Ardishaig.”

“I can’t, Johnny.”

“I’d take you out, you know.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“But look here, Lavender,” said the younger man, seizing hold of Lavender’s boat and causing the easel to shake dangerously:  “he asked me to luncheon, too.”

“Why don’t you go, then?” was the only reply, uttered rather absently.

“I can’t go without you.”

“Well, I don’t mean to go.”

The younger man looked vexed for a moment, and then said in a tone of expostulation, “You know it is very absurd of you going on like this, Lavender.  No fellow can paint decently if he gets out of bed in the middle of the night and waits for daylight to rush up to his easel.  How many hours have you been at work already to-day?  If you don’t give your eyes a rest, they will get color-blind to a dead certainty.  Do you think you will paint the whole place off the face of the earth, now that the other fellows have gone?”

“I can’t be bothered talking to you.  Johnny.  You’ll make me throw something at you.  Go away.”

“I think it’s rather mean, you know,” continued the persistent Johnny, “for a” fellow like you, who doesn’t need it, to come and fill the market all at once, while we unfortunate devils can scarcely get a crust.  And there are two heron just round the point, and I have my breech-loader and a dozen cartridges here.”

“Go away, Johnny!” That was all the answer he got.

“I’ll go out and tell Lord News, tead that you are a cantankerous brute.  I suppose he’ll have the decency to offer me luncheon, and I dare say I could get him a shot at these heron.  You are a fool not to come, Lavender;” and so saying the young man put out again, and he was heard to go away talking to himself about obstinate idiots and greed and the certainty of getting a shot at the heron.

When he had quite gone, Lavender, who had scarcely raised his eyes from his work, suddenly put down his palette and brushes—­he almost dropped them, indeed—­and quickly put up both his hands to his head, pressing them on the side of his temples.  The old fisherman in the boat beyond noticed this strange movement, and forthwith caught a rope, hauled the boat across a stretch of water, and then came scrambling over bowsprit, lowered sails and nets to where Lavender had just sat down.