"Why didn't you answer a
shipmate's hail?"
"I heard you; but just then I was adding a column of figures, and I
knew you'd look in."
At that moment Larry noted the portrait of Maggie, looking up from the
chair beside him. With a swiftness which he tried to disguise into a
mechanical action, he seized the painting and rolled it up, face
inside.
"What's that you've got?" demanded Dick.
"Just a little daub of my own."
"So you paint, too. What else can you do? Let's have a look."
"It's too rotten. I'd rather let you see something else--though all my
stuff is bad."
"You wouldn't do any little thing, would you, to brighten this
tiredest hour in the day of a tired business man," complained Dick.
"I've really been a business man to-day, Captain. Worked like the
devil--or an angel--whichever works the harder."
He lit a cigarette and settled with a sigh on the corner of Larry's
desk. Larry regarded him with a stranger and more contradicting
mixture of feelings than he had ever thought to contain: solicitude
for Dick--jealousy of him--and the instinct to protect Maggie. This
last seemed to Larry grotesquely absurd the instant it seethed up in
him, but there the instinct was: was Dick treating Maggie right?
"How was the show last night, Dick?"
"Punk!"
"I thought you said you were to see 'The Jest.
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