When they had all finished,
Lawrence Cardiff took his elbow off the mantelpiece,
changed his cup into his other hand to shake hands, and
said, with his quiet, clean-shaven smile, "So you're
back!"
"Daddy has been hoping you would be here soon," said Miss
Cardiff. "He wants the support of your presence. He's
been daring to enumerate 'Our Minor Artists' in the _Brown
Quarterly_, and his position is perfectly terrible.
Already he's had forty-one letters from friends, relatives,
and picture-dealers suggesting names he has 'doubtless
forgotten.' Poor daddy says he never knew them."
"Has he mentioned me?" asked Kendal, sitting down squarely
with his cup of tea.
"He has not."
"Then it's in the character of the uncomplaining left-over
that I'm wanted, the modest person who waits until he's
better. I refuse to act. I'll go over to the howling
majority."
"_You_ will never be a minor artist, Mr. Kendal," ventured
Miss Halifax.
"Certainly not. You will rise to greatness at a bound,"
said Lady Halifax, with substantial conviction and an
illustrative wave of a fat well-gloved hand with a
doubled-up fragment of bread and butter between the thumb
and forefinger, "or we shall be much disappointed in
you.
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