"All right," he acquiesced. "You l'arn me all them things, an' I'll be
obleeged ter ye. Things is diff'rent in diff'rent places. I reckon the
Souths hes a right ter behave es good es anybody."
When a man, whose youth and courage are at their zenith, and whose
brain is tuned to concert pitch, is thrown neck and crop out of squalid
isolation into the melting pot of Manhattan, puzzling problems of
readjustment must follow. Samson's half-starved mind was reaching out
squid-like tentacles in every direction. He was saying little, seeing
much, not yet coordinating or tabulating, but grimly bolting every
morsel of enlightenment. Later, he would digest; now, he only gorged.
Before he could hope to benefit by the advanced instruction of the life
-classes, he must toil and sweat over the primer stages of drawing.
Several months were spent laboring with charcoal and paper over plaster
casts in Lescott's studio, and Lescott himself played instructor. When
the skylight darkened with the coming of evening, the boy whose
mountain nature cried out for exercise went for long tramps that
carried him over many miles of city pavements, and after that, when the
gas was lit, he turned, still insatiably hungry, to volumes of history,
and algebra, and facts. So gluttonous was his protégé's application
that the painter felt called on to remonstrate against the danger of
overwork. But Samson only laughed; that was one of the things he had
learned to do since he left the mountains.
"I reckon," he drawled, "that as long as I'm at work, I kin keep out
of trouble. Seems like that's the only way I kin do it."
* * * * * A sloop-rigged boat with a crew of two was dancing before a brisk
breeze through blue Bermuda waters. Off to the right, Hamilton rose
sheer and colorful from the bay. At the tiller sat the white-clad
figure of Adrienne Lescott. Puffs of wind that whipped the tautly
bellying sheets lashed her dark hair about her face. Her lips, vividly
red like poppy-petals, were just now curved into an amused smile, which
made them even more than ordinarily kissable and tantalizing. Her
companion was neglecting his nominal duty of tending the sheet to watch
her.
"Wilfred," she teased, "your contrast is quite startling--and, in a
way, effective. From head to foot, you are spotless white--but your
scowl is absolutely 'the blackest black that our eyes endure.' And,"
she added, in an injured voice, "I'm sure I've been very nice to you."
"I have not yet begun to scowl," he assured her, and proceeded to show
what superlatives of saturnine expression he held in reserve. "See
here, Drennie, I know perfectly well that I'm a sheer imbecile to
reveal the fact that you've made me mad. It pleases you too perfectly.
It makes you happier than is good for you, but----"