THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
"Do you paint? Are you an artist?"
"Well." Judicious pause. "I should hardly call myself a Nartist, you know. I do paint a little. And sketch, you know—skitty kind of things."
He plucked and began to nibble a blade of grass. It was really not so much lying as his quick imagination that prompted him to add, "In Papers, you know, and all that."
"I see," said Jessie, looking at him thoughtfully. Artists were a very heterogeneous class certainly, and geniuses had a trick of being a little odd. He avoided her eye and bit his grass. "I don't do much, you know."
"It's not your profession?"
"Oh, no," said Hoopdriver, anxious now to hedge. "I don't make a regular thing of it, you know. Jest now and then something comes into my head and down it goes. No—I'm not a regular artist."
"Then you don't practise any regular profession?"
Mr. Hoopdriver looked into her eyes and saw their quiet unsuspicious regard. He had vague ideas of resuming the detective rôle. "It's like this," he said, to gain time. "I have a sort of profession. Only there's a kind of reason—nothing much, you know———"
"I beg your pardon for cross-examining you."
"No trouble," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Only I can't very well—I leave it to you, you know. I don't want to make any mystery of it, so far as that goes." Should he plunge boldly and be a barrister? That anyhow was something pretty good. But she might know about barristry.
146
