"Do you paint? Are you an artist?"

"Well." Judicious pause. "I should hardly call myself a Nartist."
you know. I DO paint a little. And sketch, you know--skitty kind
of things."

He plucked and began to nibble a blade of grass. It was really
not so much lying as his quick imagination that prompted him to
add, "In Papers, you know, and all that."

"I see," said Jessie, looking at him thoughtfully. Artists were a
very heterogeneous class certainly, and geniuses had a trick of
being a little odd. He avoided her eye and bit his grass. "I
don't do MUCH, you know."

"It's not your profession?

"Oh, no," said Hoopdriver, anxious now to hedge. "I don't make a
regular thing of it, you know. jest now and then something comes
into my head and down it goes. No--I'm not a regular artist."

"Then you don't practise any regular profession? Mr. Hoopdriver
looked into her eyes and saw their quiet unsuspicious regard. He
had vague ideas of resuming the detective role. "It's like this,"
he said, to gain time. "I have a sort of profession. Only there's
a kind of reason--nothing much, you know "

"I beg your pardon for cross-examining you."

"No trouble," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Only I can't very well--I