Lamb, puffing and blowing like a grampus, up to Amy Villa, filling
him up all the way with denunciations of Simla's philistinism and
suggestions that he alone redeemed it.

It is a thing I am ashamed to think of, and it deserved its reward.

Lamb criticized and patronized every blessed thing he saw, advised
Armour to beware of mannerisms and to be a little less liberal with
his colour, and heard absolutely unmoved of the horses Armour had
got into the Salon. 'I understand,' he said, with a benevolent
wink, 'that about four thousand pictures are hung every year at the
Salon, and I don't know how many thousand are rejected. Let Mr.
Armour get a picture accepted by the Academy. Then he will have
something to talk about.'

Neither did Sir William Lamb buy anything at all.

The experiment with Lady Pilkey was even more distressing. She
gushed with fair appropriateness and great liberality, and finally
fixed upon one scene to make her own. She winningly asked the price
of it. She had never known anybody who did not understand prices.
Poor Armour, the colour of a live coal, named one hundred rupees.

'One hundred rupees! Oh, my dear boy, I can never afford that! You
must, you must really give it to me for seventy-five. It will break
my heart if I can't have it for seventy-five.'

'Give me the pleasure,' said Armour, 'of making you a present of it.
You have been so kind about everything, and it's so seldom one meets
anybody who really cares. So let me send it to you.' It was honest