Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/24

 Now I've gone and shown you my treasure, and all the while you were concealing something much, much nicer.” She waggled her hands to indicate dejection. “You will consider mine trash, I know you will,” she went on with heavy assumed displeasure. “Oh, to be a man, so I could poke around in shops all day and really discover things! Do show us what you have, Mr. Talliaferro.”

“It's a bottle of milk,” remarked the niece, examining Mr. Talliaferro with interest.

Her aunt shrieked. Her breast heaved with repression, glinting her pins and beads. “A bottle of milk? Have you turned artist, too?”

For the first and last time in his life Mr. Talliaferro wished a lady dead. But he was a gentleman: he only seethed inwardly. He laughed with abortive heartiness.

“An artist? You flatter me, dear lady. I'm afraid my soul does not aspire so high. I am content to be merely a—”

“Milkman,” suggested the young female devil.

“—Mæcenas alone. If I might so style myself.”

Mrs. Maurier sighed with disappointment and surprise. “Ah, Mr. Talliaferro, I am dreadfully disappointed. I had hoped for a moment that some of your artist friends had at last prevailed on you to give something to the world of Art. No, no; don't say you cannot: I am sure you are capable of it, what with your—your delicacy of soul, your—” she waved her hand again vaguely toward the sky above Rampart street. “Ah, to be a man, with no ties save those of the soul! To create, to create.” She returned easily to Royal street. “But, really, a bottle of milk, Mr. Talliaferro?”

“Merely for my friend Gordon. I looked in on him this afternoon and found him quite busy. So I ran out to fetch him milk for his supper. These artists!” Mr. Talliaferro shrugged. “You know how they live.”