Interviews, you know, and Advice to Young Girls in the evening
papers, and How I preserve my beauty, and all that sort of thing.
Well, one thing he made me do was to buy a snake and a monkey.
Roscoe Sherriff is crazy about animals as aids to advertisement.
He says an animal story is the thing he does best. So I bought
them.
Algie kicked from the first. I ought to tell you that since we
left England he has taken up painting footling little pictures,
and has got the artistic temperament badly. All his life he's been
starting some new fool thing. When I first met him he prided
himself on having the finest collection of photographs of
race-horses in England. Then he got a craze for model engines.
After that he used to work the piano player till I nearly went
crazy. And now it's pictures.
I don't mind his painting. It gives him something to do and keeps
him out of mischief. He has a studio down in Washington Square,
and is perfectly happy messing about there all day.
Everything would be fine if he didn't think it necessary to tack
on the artistic temperament to his painting. He's developed the
idea that he has nerves and everything upsets them.
Things came to a head this morning at breakfast. Clarence, my
snake, has the cutest way of climbing up the leg of the table and
looking at you pleadingly in the hope that you will give him
soft-boiled egg, which he adores.
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