some fathers, finding you so vola_tile_, would take the line of cutting down your allowance; but that’s no line for me.  To begin with,’ he said, ’it would set up a constraint between us, and constraint in my family relations is what, God helping me, I’ll never allow.  And next, whatever I saved on you I’d just have to re-invest, and I’m over-capitalised as it is—­you ’d never guess the straits I’m put to daily in keeping fair abreast of fifteen per cent., which is my notion of making two ends meet.  And, lastly, it ain’t natural.  If a man’s born vola_tile_, vola_tile_ he is; and the sensible plan, I take it, is to lean your ear to Nature, the Mighty Mother, and find a career that has some use for that kind of temperament.  Now,’ said my father, ’I know a little about most legitimate careers, from ticket-punching up to lobbying, and there’s not one in which a man would hand in testimonials that he was vola_tile_.  But,’ says my father, ’what about Art?  I’ve never taken stock of that occupation, myself:  I never had time.  But I remember once in New York going to a theatre and seeing Booth act William Shakespeare’s Macbeth; and not twenty minutes later, after all the ghosts and murderings, I happened into a restaurant, and saw the same man drinking cocktails and eating Blue Point oysters—­with twice my appetite too.  And Booth was at the very top of his profession.’”

“Yes,” said Arthur Miles, by this time greatly interested.  “That’s like Mr. Mortimer, too.”

“Mortimer?” Mr. Jessup queried; and then, getting no answer, “Is he an actor?”

The boy nodded.

“A prominent one?”

“I—­I believe so.  I mean, he says he ought to be.”

“I’d like to make his acquaintance.  It’s queer, too, a child like you knowing about actors.  What’s your name?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur Miles, with another glance in the direction of the inn, “that Tilda would like me to tell.”

The young artist eyed him.

“Well, never mind; we were talking about my father.  That’s how he came to send me to Paris to study Art.  And since then I’ve done some thinking.  It works out like this,” he pursued, stepping back and studying his daub between half-closed eyes, “the old man had struck ore as usual.  I never knew a mind fuller of common sense—­just homely common sense—­but he hadn’t the time to work it.  Yet it works easy enough if you keep hold of the argument.  The Old Masters—­we’re always having it dinned into us—­didn’t hustle; they mugged away at a Saint, or a Virgin and Child, and never minded if it took ’em half a lifetime.  Well, putting aside their being paid by time and not by the job—­because comparisons on a monetary basis ain’t fair, one way or another—­for better or worse, Carpaccio hadn’t a dad in the Oil Trust—­I say, putting this aside, the credit goes to their temperament, or, if you like, part to that and part to their environment.