Page:Poet Lore, volume 27, 1916.djvu/19

 (Shrugs his shoulders.) As long as I’m not invited by counts and princes

Dušek.—Oh, keep still! I guess we know each other.

Hlaváček (Tosses his head).—As far as I’m concerned—! (A pause.) Are you going to work at this now? (He indicates the large canvas.)

Dušek. (Nods assent.)

Hlaváček.—And what about the portrait?

Dušek (Points to a smaller easel).—You see I’ve already made a study for it. But as long as the young lady won’t sit for me, I can’t begin. A photograph is nothing.

Hlaváček (Frankly).—You’'ll haul in another couple of hundred milo, wont [sic] you?

Dušek.—Paint—and you’ll earn some too!

Hlaváček (Whistles).—Paint! What—a magpie on a willow? (Bends his head in the direction of the bedroom.) I still have a canvas in there—

Dušek.—You could have finished it long ago. But in the morning you walk about the studio and whistle and in the afternoon you play chess at the coffee-house—and before you get home it’s almost evening and then you go to Thomas’s.

Hlaváček.—Indeed! To Thomas’s!

Dušek.—Well, then, to Glaubic’s! It’s all the same.

Hlaváček.—And the frescoes for Skaliček’s house—is that nothing? (He is silent for a while.) You know it’s not a bit pleasant to parch out there in the sun a couple of hours every day.

Dušek.—Make illustrations, then.

Hlaváček.—Oh, I’d be a great success at that, I would.

Dušek (In the meantime making a sketch from a small photograph).—Listen—Ládo

Hlaváček (Turns around).—Well?

Dušek.—Réza said that Šimr has been disgracing himself again at Glaubic’s.

Hlaváček.—I don’t know what you mean

Dušek.—Now stop that! As if you weren’t with him all the time.

Hlaváček.—If I can’t be with you—

Dušek.—To be sure—you’d then have to sit in the studio—and that’s not your style!

Hlaváček (Seats himself astride a chair and leans his elbows on the back of it).—You’ve gotten industrious all of a sudden!