Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/214

Rh better, but on a blank page she has actually drawn a drunken sailor trying to dance the hornpipe. That, of all things, in The Pleasures of Life!"

"Another Marianna evening?" said Philip with pleasant resignation, coming in to hear the burden of his sister's woe. "May I see the effort?"

Mr. Bartlett handed him the book without any comment. He was smiling, but on the whole he looked much more puzzled than amused. The drawing was that of a single figure: as Mrs. Bartlett had said, that of a drunken sailor trying to dance a hornpipe, and it produced this simple effect—that as one looked one seemed to see not a drawing but a drunken sailor trying to dance the hornpipe. Philip glanced and looked again. He was smiling when he took the book: he still smiled and laughed quietly at the humour of it, but behind it all, in face and attitude, there seemed to be the arrest of intense surprise. He put down his cigarette somewhere unconsciously—upon the rosewood piano, as it chanced, but people who let their houses furnished are not supposed to mind trifles such as that—with his eyes still fixed upon the page.

"Well?" demanded Mr. Bartlett at length. He seemed to be expecting something.

"Don't you think it is funny, Flip?" asked his sister. "I thought it rather good in its way; but frightfully rough, of course."

"I think that one might safely go to the length of labelling it funny," replied Philip, looking gravely from face to face, "and even admitting it to be rather good—in its way, as you say. Now do you think, Phœbe, that we-might penetrate into the maiden's chaste retreat to see to what extent she has damaged the elegant blue groundwork of her bower?"

"Oh, yes," said Phœbe, leading the way. "But why