Blyth was standing, and, steadying himself on his left leg, raised the astonished painter with his right nearly two feet high in the air.
Any spectator observing the performance of this feat of strength, and looking only at Mat, might well have thought it impossible that any human being could present a more comical aspect than he now exhibited, with his black skull-cap pushed a little on one side, and showing an inch or so of his bald head, with his grimly-grinning face empurpled by the violent physical exertion of the moment, and with his thick heavy figure ridiculously perched on one leg. Mr. Blyth, however, was beyond all comparison the more laughable object of the two, as he soared nervously into the air on Mat's foot, tottering infirmly in the strong grasp that supported him, till he seemed to be trembling all over, from the tips of his crisp black hair to the flying tails of his frock-coat. As for the expression of his round rosy face, with the bright eyes fixed in a startled stare, and the plump cheeks crumpled up by an uneasy smile, it was so exquisitely absurd, as young Thorpe saw it over his fellow-lodger's black skull-cap, that he roared again with laughter. "Oh! look up at him!" cried Zack, falling back in his chair. "Look at his face, for heaven's sake, before you put him down!"
But Mat was not to be moved by this appeal. All the attention his eyes could spare during those few moments, was devoted, not to Mr. Blyth's face but to Mr. Blyth's watch-chain. There hung the bright little key of the painter's bureau, dangling jauntily to and fro over his waistcoat-pocket. As the right foot of the Sampson of Kirk Street hoisted him up slowly, the key swung temptingly backwards and forwards between them. "Come take me! come take me!" it seemed to say, as Mat's eyes fixed greedily on it every time it dangled towards him.
"Wonderful! wonderful!" cried Mr. Blyth, looking excessively relieved when he found himself safely set down on the floor again.
"That's nothing to some of the things he can do," said Zack. "Look here! Put yourself stomach downwards on the carpet; and if you think the waistband of your trousers will stand it, he'll take you up in his teeth."
"Thank you, Zack, I'm perfectly satisfied without risking the waistband of my trousers," rejoined Valentine, returning in a great hurry to the table.
"The grog's getting cold," grumbled Mat. "Do you find it slip down easy now?" he continued, handing the squaw's mixture in the friendliest manner to Mr. Blyth.
"Astonishingly easy!" answered Valentine, drinking this time almost with the boldness of Zack himself. "Now it's cooler, one tastes the sugar. Whenever I've tried to drink regular grog, I have never been able to get people to give it me sweet enough. The delicious part of this is that there's plenty of sugar in it. And, besides, it has the merit (which real grog has not) of being harmless. It tastes strong to me, to be sure; but then I'm not used to spirits. After what you say, however, of course it must be harmless--perfectly harmless, I have no doubt." Here he sipped again, pretty freely this time, by way of convincing himself of the innocent weakness of the squaw's mixture.
While Mr. Blyth had been speaking, Mat's hands had been gradually stealing down deeper and deeper into the pockets of his trousers, until his finger and thumb, and a certain plastic substance hidden away in the left-hand pocket came gently into contact, just as Valentine left off speaking. "Let's have another toast," cried Mat, quite briskly, the instant the last word was out of his guest's mouth. "Come on, one of you and give us another toast," he reiterated, with a roar of barbarous joviality, taking up his glass in his right hand, and keeping his left still in his pocket.
"Give you another toast, you noisy old savage!" repeated Zack, "I'll give you five, all at once! Mr. Blyth, Mrs. Blyth, Madonna, Columbus, and The Golden Age--three excellent people and two glorious pictures; let's lump them all together, in a friendly way, and drink long life and success to them in beakers of fragrant grog!" shouted the young gentleman, making perilously rapid progress through his second glass, as he spoke.
"Do you know, I'm afraid I must change to some other place, if you have no objection," said Mr. Blyth, after he had duly honored the composite toast just proposed. "The fire here, behind me, is getting rather too hot."
"Change along with me," said Mat. "I don't mind heat, nor cold neither, for the matter of that."
Valentine accepted this offer with great gratitude. "By-the-bye, Zack," he said, placing himself comfortably in his host's chair, between the table and the wall--"I was going to ask a favor of our excellent friend here, when you suggested that wonderful and matchless trial of strength which we have just had. You have been of such inestimable assistance to me already, my dear sir," he continued, turning towards Mat, with all his natural cordiality of disposition now fully developed, under the fostering influence of the Squaw's Mixture. "You have laid me under such an inexpressible obligation in saving my picture from destruction--"
"I wish you could make up your mind to say what you want in plain words," interrupted Mat. "I'm one of your rough-handed, thick-headed sort, I am. I'm not gentleman enough to understand parlarver. It don't do me no good: it only worrits me into a perspiration." And Mat, shaking down his shirt-sleeve, drew it several times across his forehead, as a proof of the truth of his last assertion.
"Quite right! quite right!" cried Mr. Blyth, patting him on the shoulder in the most friendly manner imaginable. "In plain words, then, when I mentioned, just now, how much I admired your arms in an artistic point of view, I was only paving the way for asking you to let me make a drawing of them, in black and white, for a large picture that I mean to paint later in the year. My classical figure composition, you know, Zack--you have seen the sketch--Hercules bringing to Eurystheus the Erymanthian boar--a glorious subject; and our friend's arms, and, indeed, his chest, too, if he would kindly consent to sit for it, would make the very studies I most want for Hercules."
"What on earth is he driving at?" asked Mat, addressing himself to young Thorpe, after staring at Valentine for a moment or two in a state of speechless amazement.
"He wants to draw your arms--of course you will be only too happy to let him--you can't understand anything about it now--but you will when you begin to sit--pass the cigars--thank Blyth for meaning to make a Hercules of you-and tell him you'll come to the painting-room whenever he likes," answered Zack, joining his sentences together in his most offhand manner, all in a breath.
"What painting-room? Where is it?" asked Mat, still in a densely stupefied condition.
"My painting-room," replied Valentine. "Where you saw the pictures, and saved Columbus, yesterday."
Mat considered for a moment--then suddenly brightened up, and began to look quite intelligent again.