Something told me there was no security but
in his doing so before the new factor, as we used to say at Mr.
Pinhorn's, should render the problem incalculable. It only half-
reassured me that the sketch itself was so copious and so eloquent
that even at the worst there would be the making of a small but
complete book, a tiny volume which, for the faithful, might well
become an object of adoration. There would even not be wanting
critics to declare, I foresaw, that the plan was a thing to be more
thankful for than the structure to have been reared on it. My
impatience for the structure, none the less, grew and grew with the
interruptions. He had on coming up to town begun to sit for his
portrait to a young painter, Mr. Rumble, whose little game, as we
also used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, was to be the first to perch on
the shoulders of renown. Mr. Rumble's studio was a circus in which
the man of the hour, and still more the woman, leaped through the
hoops of his showy frames almost as electrically as they burst into
telegrams and "specials." He pranced into the exhibitions on their
back; he was the reporter on canvas, the Vandyke up to date, and
there was one roaring year in which Mrs.
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