my depressing visitant also said, he never HAD got his spirits up.
I was fortunately able to dismiss her with her own somewhat
improved. But the dim ghost of poor Brooksmith is one of those
that I see. He had indeed been spoiled.




THE REAL THING




CHAPTER I



When the porter's wife, who used to answer the house-bell,
announced "A gentleman and a lady, sir," I had, as I often had in
those days--the wish being father to the thought--an immediate
vision of sitters. Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be;
but not in the sense I should have preferred. There was nothing at
first however to indicate that they mightn't have come for a
portrait. The gentleman, a man of fifty, very high and very
straight, with a moustache slightly grizzled and a dark grey
walking-coat admirably fitted, both of which I noted
professionally--I don't mean as a barber or yet as a tailor--would
have struck me as a celebrity if celebrities often were striking.
It was a truth of which I had for some time been conscious that a
figure with a good deal of frontage was, as one might say, almost