“There!” he went on, looking out of the window; “do you see that fat man slouching along the Parade, with a snuffy nose?  That’s my favorite enemy, Dunball.  He tried to quarrel with me ten years ago, and he has done nothing but bring out the hidden benevolence of my character ever since.  Look at him! look how he frowns as he turns this way.  And now look at me!  I can smile and nod to him.  I make a point of always smiling and nodding to him—­it keeps my hand in for other enemies.  Good-morning! (I’ve cast him twice in heavy damages) good-morning, Mr. Dunball.  He bears malice, you see; he won’t speak; he’s short in the neck, passionate, and four times as fat as he ought to be; he has fought against my amiability for ten mortal years; when he can’t fight any longer, he’ll die suddenly, and I shall be the innocent cause of it.”

Mr. Boxsious uttered this fatal prophecy with extraordinary complacency, nodding and smiling out of the window all the time at the unfortunate man who had rashly tried to provoke him.  When his favorite enemy was out of sight, he turned away, and indulged himself in a brisk turn or two up and down the room.  Meanwhile I lifted my canvas on the easel, and was on the point of asking him to sit down, when he assailed me again.

“Now, Mr. Artist,” he cried, quickening his walk impatiently, “in the interests of the Town Council, your employers, allow me to ask you for the last time when you are going to begin?”

“And allow me, Mr. Boxsious, in the interest of the Town Council also,” said I, “to ask you if your notion of the proper way of sitting for your portrait is to walk about the room!”

“Aha! well put—­devilish well put!” returned Mr. Boxsious; “that’s the only sensible thing you have said since you entered my house; I begin to like you already.”  With these words he nodded at me approvingly, and jumped into the high chair that I had placed for him with the alacrity of a young man.

“I say, Mr. Artist,” he went on, when I had put him into the right position (he insisted on the front view of his face being taken, because the Town Council would get the most for their money in that way), “you don’t have many such good jobs as this, do you?”

“Not many,” I said.  “I should not be a poor man if commissions for life-size portraits often fell in my way.”

“You poor!” exclaimed Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously.  “I dispute that point with you at the outset.  Why, you’ve got a good cloth coat, a clean shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin.  You’ve got the sleek look of a man who has slept between sheets and had his breakfast.  You can’t humbug me about poverty, for I know what it is.  Poverty means looking like a scarecrow, feeling like a scarecrow, and getting treated like a scarecrow.  That was my luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying the law.  Poverty, indeed!  Do you shake in your shoes, Mr. Artist, when you think what you were at twenty?  I do, I can promise you.”