Page:A Legend of Camelot, Pictures and Poems, etc. George du Maurier, 1898.djvu/155



ACK SPRATT, equally pure and guileless, and glad, as most of us are, to find his own taste justified in his own eyes by the good opinion of the world, began to feel an honest pride in his wife's beauty such as he had never quite felt before; and would not have changed her now for any blessed saint, virgin, or martyr in the whole National Gallery.

The truth is, that he had ceased to reverence those classic types.

For his artistic nature was quick to receive new impressions and to forget old ones; and with that tendency to generalise hastily which is so characteristic of youth, he would now state everywhere, on his own authority as a painter, that there was no beauty out of the English aristocracy, amongst whom he naturally included Mrs. Spratt and himself.

Moreover, it gratified his unselfish disposition to think that, after all, it was not entirely for his sake that Society had given so warm a welcome to her.

All of which did equal credit to his head and to his heart.

A more commonplace nature might have felt some jealousy; but Jack Spratt, who knew that he had within him all the jealous potentialities of an Othello, should any real cause for jealousy arise, could scarcely so insult his wife's good sense as to suppose that any of these amiable but mindless trifiers who pestered her with their well-meant attentions, could ever be possible rivals for such an one as he.

These were indeed halcyon days!

Mrs. Spratt, as we have seen, by a burst of laughter so opportune that it might almost be called a stroke of genius, had cleared the house of the trusty, but not very presentable, old friends, and Jack had ceased to miss them.

The only surviving relative of the Spratts was Jack's grandfather, who kept an old established emporium for hosiery in St. Mary Axe; a good-natured and affectionate old man, who loved Jack with all a grandfather's partiality, but who had been much disgusted at his taking to such a beggarly and disreputable trade as painting pictures for hire.

If it had only been house painting, he could have understood it!

However, as Jack was in independent circumstances, there was no gainsaying his right to choose his own line of life, and daub away as much as he liked; and the old Gentleman had swallowed his disgust, and would often drop in of an evening at his grandson's house.

These visits were not so pleasant to Mrs. Spratt as the old Gentleman believed.

Although circumstances had made him a well-to-do and contented hosier, Nature had intended him for a low comedian, or "funny" man; and he was never happy unless he made himself the life and soul of the party wherever he went.

He had never tired of poking fun at the trusty friends, for instance, whose lofty aims he could not sympathise with, and whom he had looked upon as a set of weak-minded, unwholesome, and affected nincompoops, and would mimic to the life under their very noses; especially Peter Leonardo Pye.

Now Mrs. Spratt hated fun, and thought it vulgar, as no doubt it very often is; and as for the trusty friends, they had loathed 71