[Felix O’Day by F. Hopkinson Smith]@TWC D-Link book
Felix O’Day

CHAPTER V
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A crumpled glove, a bunch of withered roses, the salt breath of an outlying marsh, are often but so many fairy wands reviving comedies and tragedies on which the curtains of forgetfulness have been rung down these many years.
Something in the aroma of the place was recalling kindred spirits across the sea, when the door was swung wide and Ganger in a big, hearty voice, cried: "Mr.O'Day, is it?
Oh, I am glad! And that dear child, and--Hello! who invited you, you restless little devil of a dog?
Come in, all of you! I've a model, but she doesn't care and neither do I.And this, Mr.
O'Day, is my old friend, Sam Dogger--and he's no relation of yours, you imp!"-- with a bob of his grizzled head at Fudge--"He's a landscape-painter and a good one--one of those Hudson River fellows--and would be a fine one if he would stick to it.

Give me that hat and coat, my chick-a-biddy, and I'll hang them up.

And now here's a chair for you, Mr.O'Day, and please get into it--and there's a jar full of tobacco, and if you haven't got a pipe of your own you'll find a whole lot of corncobs on the mantelpiece and you can help yourself." O'Day had stood smiling at the painter, Masie's hand fast in his, Fudge tiptoeing softly about, divided between a sense of the strangeness of the place and a certainty of mice behind the canvases.

Felix knew the old fellow's kind, and recognized the note of attempted gayety in the voice--the bravado of the poor putting their best, sometimes their only, foot foremost.
"No, I won't sit down--not yet," he answered pleasantly; "I will look around, if you will let me, and I will try one of your pipes before I begin.

What a jolly place you have here! Don't move"-- this to the model, a slip of a girl, her eyes muffled in a lace veil, one of Ganger's Oriental costumes about her shoulders--"I am quite at home, my dear, and if you have been a model any length of time you will know exactly what that means." "Oh, she's my Fatima," exclaimed Ganger.


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