That very afternoon Mr. Arthur had received the intimation at his
bank that he was shortly to be made a cashier. He glowed with the
prospect. His conversation that evening was of the brightest. The
poisoned shafts of Miss Hallard's satire met the armoured resistance
of his high spirits. They fell--pointless and unavailing--from his
unbounded faith in himself. A man who, after a comparatively few
years' service in a bank, is deemed fitted for the responsible duties
of a cashier, is qualified to express an opinion, even on art. Mr.
Arthur expressed many.
"Don't see how you can say a thing's artistic if you don't like it,"
he declared.
"I think you're quite right, Mr. Arthur," said Mrs. Hewson. "If I
like a thing--like that picture in one of the Christmas Annuals--I
always say, 'Now I call that artistic,' don't I, Ern?"
Her husband nodded with his mouth full of the best bloater.
"Well, you couldn't call that thing artistic, Mrs. Hewson, if you
mean the thing that's over the piano in the sitting-room?"
"Why not?" asked Janet; "don't you like it?"
"No," said Mr. Arthur emphatically, "nor any one else either, I
should think. I bet you a shilling they wouldn't.
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