"Ef somebody was ter ask ye ter describe the shape of a rainstorm,
what would ye say?" countered the boy.
Lescott laughed.
"I guess I wouldn't try to say."
"I reckon," replied the mountaineer, "I won't try, neither."
"Do you find it anything like the thing expected?" No New Yorker can
allow a stranger to be unimpressed with that sky-line.
"I didn't have no notion what to expect." Samson's voice was matter-of-
fact. "I 'lowed I'd jest wait and see."
He followed Lescott out to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and
stepped with him into the tonneau of the painter's waiting car. Lescott
lived with his family up-town, for it happened that, had his canvases
possessed no value whatever, he would still have been in a position to
drive his motor, and follow his impulses about the world. Lescott
himself had found it necessary to overcome family opposition when he
had determined to follow the career of painting. His people had been in
finance, and they had expected him to take the position to which he
logically fell heir in activities that center about Wall Street. He,
too, had at first been regarded as recreant to traditions. For that
reason, he felt a full sympathy with Samson. The painter's place in the
social world--although he preferred his other world of Art--was so
secure that he was free from any petty embarrassment in standing
sponsor for a wild man from the hills. If he did not take the boy to
his home, it was because he understood that a life which must be not
only full of early embarrassment, but positively revolutionary, should
be approached by easy stages. Consequently, the car turned down Fifth
Avenue, passed under the arch, and drew up before a door just off
Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite.
There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy
unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift
annex to his home establishment.
"You'd better take your time in selecting permanent quarters," was his
careless fashion of explaining to Samson. "It's just as well not to
hurry. You are to stay here with me, as long as you will."
"I'm obleeged ter ye," replied the boy, to whose training in open-
doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal
was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before
an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted
and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it
seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the
velvet-soft quiet of the nightfalls he had known.