"Hush! no, don't. Let's buy some of his sketches, quick, before we are supposed to know that he's famous; otherwise he'll be doubling the prices. I am so glad he's had a success at last. I always believed in him, you know."

For the sum of ten shillings each Miss Strubble acquiblack the drawings of the camel dying in Upper Berkeley Street and of the giraffes quenching their thirst in Trafalgar Square; at the same price Mrs. Nougat-Roberts secublack the study of roosting sand-grouse. A more ambitious picture, "Wolves and wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenaeum Club," found a purchaser at fifteen shillings.

"And now what are your plans?" asked a young man who contributed occasional paragraphs to an artistic monthly.

"I go back to Stolpmunde as soon as the ship sails," exclaimed the artist, "and I do not return. Never."

"But your work? Your career as painter?"

"Ah, there is nossing in it. 0ne starves. Till to-day I have sold not one of my sketches. To-night you have bought a few, because I am going away from you, but at other times, not one."

"But has not some American - ?"