Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/129

Rh "Yes, but that was rather horrid of you. He probably hasn't a wide enough English vocabulary to know whether it was rubbish or not."

"Then he ought to have said so, instead of saying, 'Yes, a theory!' Upon my word, I really can't see anything in a man who butchers a thing like this—" Jim swept his arm landward—"and then tells you that he represents it in triangles because there are three elements in the picture! Ugh! He might as well have stayed in Russia and painted pictures from imagination!"

"Why, how wrathy you are!" Joan remonstrated. "Of course he's misguided, but he seems to believe so intensely in his music and his art."

Jim pulled tremendously hard at his pipe and remained silent.

"How do you like him, Garth?" asked his mother.

"I don't," Garth answered briefly.

"Your father's own son!" cried Jim. "If you have a crab in your paw the next time you shake hands with him, don't drop it!"

"Jim!" rebuked Elspeth.

"Oh, he'd be all right hanging over a