The Plain Old Man Read Online Free Page B

painted more than one portrait of Ernestina, the way he did of Lady Hamilton, but that’s absurd. Romney was a strange sort of man, but he wasn’t eccentric enough to keep on immortalizing the Kelling jaw. Anyway, Ernestina wasn’t in London long enough. Abigail Adams saw to that, I expect.”
    “Forty thousand pounds, eh?” said Sebastian. “In that case, I’m afraid you’ll have to boost your offer half a million or so, Ridpath.”
    The Sorcerer laughed. “Can’t manage it this week, I’m afraid. Well, ladies and gentlemen, are we going to rehearse or are we not?”
    “I’m not.” Jack Tippleton got up. “Come along, Jenicot. Your mother will be wondering what’s kept us.”
    “Oh, I hardly think so,” drawled the brat. “Thanks for the tea, Mrs. Kelling. Coming with us, Parker?”
    “I’ve got my car, thanks.”
    “Goody,” cried Gillian Bruges. “You can give me a lift back to the garage and save me another horrendous cab fare.”
    Neither Jack Tippleton nor his daughter looked any too happy at this prospect. Regrettably, Parker Pence did. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Parker was a good-natured young fellow, otherwise he mightn’t be able to hit it off so well with Jenicot. Nevertheless, Sarah had full confidence she’d soon be hearing some wonderment among the cast about what Gillian Bruges thought she was up to.
    The whole thing was silly, Gillian was as much too old for Parker Pence as she was young for Jack Tippleton. Those winsome ways of hers, Sarah had decided at their first meeting early in the week, were more the result of long practice than of girlish exuberance. Well, it would all blow over, no doubt, once they’d done the show. In the meantime, she had her own attendant squire to command.
    “Come on, Guy,” she said, “let’s finish that last flat.”
    Guy Mannering was only too happy to follow Sarah out to the sun parlor. If he’d had any hopes of engaging her in aesthetic chitchat instead of painting bushes, though, he was soon disabused of them. Sarah could be a first-class drill sergeant, having got in plenty of practice on Edith, her late mother-in-law’s cantankerous maid, during her traumatic first marriage. They did in fact manage to get done with the hearts and flowers before Sarah had to change for dinner and Guy to go and do whatever it was he did when he wasn’t painting scenery at Emma’s.
    If he hadn’t been wearing paint-stained jeans he might have got asked to dine with them, but Emma, whatever her other impetuosities, was too much a lady of the old school to allow for that. Sarah wasn’t surprised to find out she’d invited Charlie Daventer to stay, though; it would have been unusual if she hadn’t. What did surprise Sarah was that Ridpath Wale was still with them. He generally had some other engagement.
    She put on a peacock-blue silk dress she’d picked up in Phoenix—being married to Max was giving her wardrobe a cosmopolitan flavor—and went down prepared to be bored stiff by endless talk about stage technique. To her surprise she found them still talking about the Romney. Rather, they kept coming back to it, especially after they’d returned to the drawing room for their after-dinner coffee.
    Ridpath wanted to know how so large a painting had been fitted into that monstrous frame, and how they’d ever got it off the ship and out to Pleasaunce.
    Sarah knew that. Ernestine had in fact been trundled over the roads in a brewer’s wagon. Emma told the story, and made an engaging comedy of it. As to the mechanics of the painting, there was no way she could extract much entertainment from them. The canvas was simply tacked in the customary way to a heavily braced wooden stretcher which in turn was held into the frame by large wood screws.
    “The thing can be taken apart easily enough, then?” Ridpath remarked.
    “Oh yes, it’s not hard, merely awkward because of its size and weight. We have Ernestine down every ten years or so for