Of course the cot and the rough-
and-ready furnishings of the studio were grotesquely short of the
luxury of those sunny days when Larry had had plenty of easy money and
had been free to gratify his taste for the best of everything; but the
quarters were infinitely more luxurious and comfortable than his more
recent three-by-seven room at Sing Sing with its damp and chilly stone
walls.
There were many reasons why Larry was appealed to by the idea of
making his home for the present in this old house in this dingy,
unexciting, unromantic street. He was drawn toward this bluff,
outspoken, autocratic painter, and was curious about him. And then the
way his grandmother had spoken, the gleam in her old eyes, had stirred
an affection for her that he had never before felt. And then there was
Maggie, with her startlingly new dusky beauty, her admiration of him
that had so swiftly altered to defiance, her challenge to a duel of
purposes.
Yes, for the present, this dingy old house in this dingy old street
was just the place he preferred to be.
It was not the part of wisdom to start forth on the beginning of his
new career in his shapeless prison shoddy; so the next day Larry
pottered about the studio, acting as maid-of-all-work, while the
clothes in his trunk which had been stored with the Duchess were being
sponged and pressed by the little tailor down the street, and while a
laundress, driven by the Duchess, was preparing the rest of his outfit
for his debut.
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