A fine summer morning would see him set forth, long before milk-carts had begun to rattle along the streets, and on one such expedition, as he stepped briskly through a poor district south of the river, he was surprised to see an artist at work, painting seriously, his easel in the dry gutter.

He slackened his pace to have a glimpse of the canvas, and the painter, a young, pleasant-looking fellow, turned round and asked if he had a match.

Able to supply this demand, Warburton talked whilst the other relit his pipe.

It rejoiced him, he said, to see a painter engaged upon such a subject as this--a bit of squalid London's infinite picturesqueness.
The next morning Warburton took the same walk, and again found the painter at work.

They talked freely; they exchanged invitations; and that same evening Norbert Franks climbed the staircase to Will's flat, and smoked his first pipe and drank his first whisky-and-soda in the pleasant room overlooking Ranelagh.