“But you can’t buy pictures without seeing them,” protests Marjorie.  “Brooks is too sensitive.  He wants appreciation, encouragement, you see.”

“A lot I could give him,” says Mr. Robert.  “Why, I know no more about that sort of thing than—­well, than——­” And just here his eye lights on me.  “Oh, I say, though,” he goes on, “it would be all right, wouldn’t it, if I sent a—­er—­a commissioner?”

“I suppose that would do,” says Marjorie.

“Good!” says Mr. Robert.  “Torchy, go with Marjorie and look at that lot.  If they’re any good, buy one for me.”

“Wha-a-at!” says I.  “Me buy a picture?”

“Full power,” says he, startin’ back towards the meetin’.  “Pick out the best, and tell Bladen to send me the bill.”

And there we’re left, Marjorie and me, lookin’ foolish at each other.

“Well, he’s done a duck,” says I.

“If you mean he’s got himself out of buying a picture, you’re mistaken,” says she.  “Come along.”

She insists on callin’ the bluff, too.  Course, I tries to show her, all the way up in the limousine, how punk a performer I’d be at a game like that, and how they’d spot me for a bush leaguer the first stab I made.

“Not at all,” says Marjorie, “if you do as I tell you.”

With that she proceeds to coach me in the art critic business.  The lines wa’n’t hard to get, anyway.

“For some of them,” she goes on, “you merely go ‘Um-m-m!’ under your breath, you know, or ‘Ah-h-h-h!’ to yourself.  Then when I give you a nudge you may exclaim, ‘Fine feeling!’ or ‘Very daring!’ or ’Wonderful technic, wonderful!’”

“Yes; but when must I say which?” says I.

“It doesn’t matter in the least,” says Marjorie.

“And you think just them few remarks,” says I, “will pull me through.”

“Enough for an entire exhibit at the National Academy,” says she.  “And when you decide which you like best, just point it out to Mr. Bladen.”

“Gee!” says I.  “Suppose I pick a lemon?”

“Robert won’t know the difference,” says she, “and it will serve him right.  Besides, poor Brooks needs the encouragement.”

“Kind of a dub beginner with no backing is he?” says I.

Marjorie describes him different.  Accordin’ to her, he’s a classy comer in the art line, with all kinds of talent up his sleeve and Fame busy just around the corner on a laurel wreath exactly his size.  Seems Brooks was from a good fam’ly that had dropped their bundle somewhere along the road; so this art racket that he’d taken up as a time killer he’d had to turn into a steady job.  He wa’n’t paintin’ just to keep his brushes soft.  He was out to win the kale.

Between the lines I gathers enough to guess that before she hooked up with Ferdy, the head-achy one, Marjorie had been some mushy over Brooks boy herself.  He’d done a full length of her, it appears, and was workin’ up quite a portrait trade, when all of a sudden he ups and marries someone else, a rank outsider.