"You're half an hour late, Maggie," Hunt began at her again in his
rumbling voice. "Can't stand for such a waste of my time!"

"How about my time?" retorted Maggie, who indeed had a grievance. "I
was supposed to have the day off, but instead I had to carry that tray
of cigarettes around till the last person in the Ritzmore had finished
lunch. Anyhow," she added, "I don't see that your time's worth so much
when you spend it on such painty messes as these."

"It's not up to you to tell me what my time's worth!" retorted Hunt.
"I pay you--that's enough for you!... Because you weren't on time, I
stuck Old Jimmie out there to finish off this picture. I'll be through
with the old cut-throat in ten minutes. Be ready to take his place."

"All right," said Maggie sulkily.

For all his roaring she was not much afraid of the painter. While his
brushes flicked at, and streaked across, the canvas she stood idly
watching him. He was in paint-smeared, baggy trousers and a soft shirt
whose open collar gave a glimpse of a deep chest matted with hair and
whose rolled-up sleeves revealed forearms that seemed absurdly large
to be fiddling with those slender sticks. A crowbar would have seemed
more in harmony. He was unromantically old--all of thirty-five Maggie
guessed; and with his square, rough-hewn face and tousled, reddish
hair he was decidedly ugly. But for the fact that he really did work--
though of course his work was foolish--and the fact that he paid his
way--he bought little, but no one could beat him by so much as a penny
in a bargain, not even the Duchess--Maggie might have considered him
as one of the many bums who floated purposelessly through that drab
region.