Page:Hopkinson Smith--armchair at the inn.djvu/311

 the eminent lady would have been a pronounced success. She is one now, for she insists on knowing that the thing she buys is genuine, and it saves her many absurdities. I can think of nothing in her collection that can be questioned—and I cannot say that of my own.”

“And so you don’t believe that a man or a woman can make what they please of themselves?” asked Herbert, who was always glad to hear from Lemois.

“Not any more than I believe that tulip bulbs will grow blackberries if I water them enough.”

“It’s all a question of blood,” essayed Le Blanc, snipping the end from his cigar with a gold cutter attached to his watch-chain. “Failures in life are almost always due to a scrap of gray tissue clogging up a gentleman’s brain, which, ten chances to one, he has inherited from some plebeian ancestor.”

“Failures in life come from nothing of the sort!” blurted out Louis. “It’s just dead laziness, and of the cheapest kind. All the painters I knew at Julien’s who waited for a mood are waiting yet.”

“The trouble with most unsuccessful men,”