With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one
chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all
I have got."
"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,"
I ventured to say.
"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."
"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I returned.
"If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed."
"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it
does."
"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
themselves."
"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked Wynnie.
"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on the
easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."
"Why?" asked Wynnie.
"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished
that none but a painter could do it justice.
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