“Then come along down to my studio to-morrow.”

“Eight-o!” said Archie.

CHAPTER V

STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF AN ARTIST’S MODEL

“I say, old thing!”

Archie spoke plaintively.  Already he was looking back ruefully to the time when he had supposed that an artist’s model had a soft job.  In the first five minutes muscles which he had not been aware that he possessed had started to ache like neglected teeth.  His respect for the toughness and durability of artists’ models was now solid.  How they acquired the stamina to go through this sort of thing all day and then bound off to Bohemian revels at night was more than he could understand.

“Don’t wobble, confound you!” snorted Mr. Wheeler.

“Yes, but, my dear old artist,” said Archie, “what you don’t seem to grasp—­what you appear not to realise—­is that I’m getting a crick in the back.”

“You weakling!  You miserable, invertebrate worm.  Move an inch and I’ll murder you, and come and dance on your grave every Wednesday and Saturday.  I’m just getting it.”

“It’s in the spine that it seems to catch me principally.”

“Be a man, you faint-hearted string-bean!” urged J. B. Wheeler.  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  Why, a girl who was posing for me last week stood for a solid hour on one leg, holding a tennis racket over her head and smiling brightly withal.”

“The female of the species is more india-rubbery than the male,” argued Archie.

“Well, I’ll be through in a few minutes.  Don’t weaken.  Think how proud you’ll be when you see yourself on all the bookstalls.”

Archie sighed, and braced himself to the task once more.  He wished he had never taken on this binge.  In addition to his physical discomfort, he was feeling a most awful chump.  The cover on which Mr. Wheeler was engaged was for the August number of the magazine, and it had been necessary for Archie to drape his reluctant form in a two-piece bathing suit of a vivid lemon colour; for he was supposed to be representing one of those jolly dogs belonging to the best families who dive off floats at exclusive seashore resorts.  J. B. Wheeler, a stickler for accuracy, had wanted him to remove his socks and shoes; but there Archie had stood firm.  He was willing to make an ass of himself, but not a silly ass.

“All right,” said J. B. Wheeler, laying down his brush.  “That will do for to-day.  Though, speaking without prejudice and with no wish to be offensive, if I had had a model who wasn’t a weak-kneed, jelly-backboned son of Belial, I could have got the darned thing finished without having to have another sitting.”

“I wonder why you chappies call this sort of thing ‘sitting,’” said Archie, pensively, as he conducted tentative experiments in osteopathy on his aching back.  “I say, old thing, I could do with a restorative, if you have one handy.  But, of course, you haven’t, I suppose,” he added, resignedly.  Abstemious as a rule, there were moments when Archie found the Eighteenth Amendment somewhat trying.