Will had much ado not to laugh.  On his return from a holiday, Mrs. Hopper always presumed him to be despondent in view of the resumption of daily work.  He was beginning to talk of Mrs. Allchin’s troubles, when at the outer door sounded a long nervous knock.

“Ha!  That’s Mr. Franks.”

Mrs. Hopper ran to admit the visitor.

CHAPTER 2

“Warburton!” cried a high-pitched voice from the passage.  “Have you seen The Art World?”

And there rushed into the room a tall, auburn-headed young man of five-and-twenty, his comely face glowing in excitement.  With one hand he grasped his friend’s, in the other he held out a magazine.

“You haven’t seen it!  Look here!  What d’you think of that, confound you!”

He had opened the magazine so as to display an illustration, entitled “Sanctuary,” and stated to be after a painting by Norbert Franks.

“Isn’t it good?  Doesn’t it come out well?—­deuce take you, why don’t you speak?”

“Not bad—­for a photogravure,” said Warburton, who had the air of a grave elder in the presence of this ebullient youth.

“Be hanged!  We know all about that.  The thing is that it’s there.  Don’t you feel any surprise?  Haven’t you got anything to say?  Don’t you see what this means, you old ragamuffin?”

“Shouldn’t wonder if it meant coin of the realm—­for your shrewd dealer.”

“For me too, my boy, for me too!  Not out of this thing, of course.  But I’ve arrived, I’m lance, the way is clear!  Why, you don’t seem to know what it means getting into The Art World.”

“I seem to remember,” said Warburton, smiling, “that a month or two ago, you hadn’t language contemptuous enough for this magazine and all connected with it.”

“Don’t be an ass!” shrilled the other, who was all this time circling about the little room with much gesticulation.  “Of course one talks like that when one hasn’t enough to eat and can’t sell a picture.  I don’t pretend to have altered my opinion about photogravures, and all that.  But come now, the thing itself?  Be honest, Warburton.  Is it bad, now?  Can you look at that picture, and say that it’s worthless?”

“I never said anything of the kind.”

“No, no!  You’re too deucedly good-natured.  But I always detected what you were thinking, and I saw it didn’t surprise you at all when the Academy muffs refused it.”

“There you’re wrong,” cried Warburton.  “I was really surprised.”

“Confound your impudence!  Well, you may think what you like.  I maintain that the thing isn’t half bad.  It grows upon me.  I see its merits more and more.”

Franks was holding up the picture, eyeing it intently.  “Sanctuary” represented the interior of an old village church.  On the ground against a pillar, crouched a young and beautiful woman, her dress and general aspect indicating the last degree of vagrant wretchedness; worn out, she had fallen asleep in a most graceful attitude, and the rays of a winter sunset smote upon her pallid countenance.  Before her stood the village clergyman, who had evidently just entered, and found her here; his white head was bent in the wonted attitude of clerical benevolence; in his face blended a gentle wonder and a compassionate tenderness.