"What!" said she, with a half-scornful smile; "are you a disciple of
art?"

"Yes; why not?"

"Well, I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but, to tell you the honest
truth, it seems but the other day that you were Pat Murphy."

"But am I a Pat Murphy?" he asked, with gentle dignity.

"No, Mr. Fleet; I will do you the justice to say that I think you very
much above your station."

"I am sufficiently a democrat, Miss Ludolph, to believe that a man can
be a man in any honest work."

"And I, Mr. Fleet, am not in the least degree a democrat."

Which fact she proceeded to prove by ordering him about for the next
hour like the most absolute little despot that ever queened it over
a servile province in the dark ages. Bat it was rather difficult to
keep up this style of dictatorship with Dennis. He seemed so intelligent
and polite that she often had it to her tongue to ask his opinion on
certain points. Toward the last she did so, and the opinion he gave,
she admitted to herself, was judicious; but for a purpose of her own
she disregarded it, and took a different way.

Dennis at once saw through her plan of arrangement. In the centre of
that side of the room which he had cleared, she caused him to hang one
of the largest and finest pictures, which, under Mr. Schwartz's