Fresh visitors constantly attested the skillfulness of these imitations by involuntarily stooping to pick up the illusive pen and brush; Mr.Blyth always enjoying the discomfiture and astonishment of every new victim, as thoroughly as if the practical joke had been a perfectly new one on each successive occasion.
Such was the interior condition of the painting-room, after the owner had inhabited it for a period of little more than two months! The church-clock of the suburb has just struck ten, when quick, light steps approach the studio door.

A gentleman enters--trips gaily over the imitative pen and brush--and, walking up to the fire, begins to warm his back at it, looking about him rather absently, and whistling "Drops of Brandy" in the minor key.

This gentleman is Mr.Valentine Blyth.
He looks under forty, but is really a little over fifty.

His face is round and rosy, and not marked by a single wrinkle in any part of it.
He has large, sparkling black eyes; wears neither whiskers, beard, nor mustache; keeps his thick curly black hair rather too closely cut; and has a briskly-comical kindness of expression in his face, which it is not easy to contemplate for the first time without smiling at him.

He is tall and stout, always wears very tight trousers, and generally keeps his wristbands turned up over the cuffs of his coat.