The Reason Why | Page 7

to discuss their affairs.
"I know nothing, you see, Mimo," the Countess Shulski said, "beyond
that you arrived yesterday. I think it was foolish of you to risk it. At
least in Paris Madame Dubois would have let you stay and owe a
week's rent. But here--among these strangers--"
"Now do not scold us, Mentor," the man answered, with a charming
smile. "Mirko and I felt the sun had fled when you went last Thursday.
It rained and rained two--three--days, and the Dubois canary got
completely on our nerves; and, heavens above! the Grisoldi insisted
upon cooking garlic in his food at every meal!--we had thought to have
broken him of the habit, you remember?--and up, up it came from his
stove. Body of Bacchus! It killed inspiration. I could not paint, my
Chérisette, and Mirko could not play. And so we said: 'At least--at least
the sun of the hair of our Chérisette must shine in the dark England; we,
too, will go there, away from the garlic and the canary, and the fogs
will give us new ideas, and we shall create wonderful things.' Is it not
so, Mirko mio?"
"But, of course, Papa," the boy echoed; and then his voice trembled
with a pitiful note. "You are not angry with us, darling Chérisette? Say
it is not so?"
"My little one! How can you! I could never be angry with my Mirko,
no matter what he did!" And the two pools of ink softened from the
expression of the black panther into the divine tenderness of the Sistine
Madonna, as she pressed the frail, little body to her side and pulled her

cloak around it.
"Only I fear it cannot be well for you here in London, and if my uncle
should know, all hope of getting anything from him may be over. He
expressly said if I would come quite alone, to stay with him for these
few weeks, it would be to my advantage; and my advantage means
yours, as you know. Otherwise do you think I would have eaten of his
hateful bread?"
"You are so good to us, Chérisette," the man Mimo said. "You have,
indeed, a sister of the angels, Mirko mio; but soon we shall be all rich
and famous. I had a dream last night, and already I have begun a new
picture of grays and mists--of these strange fogs!"
Count Mimo Sykypri was a confirmed optimist.
"Meanwhile you are in the one room, in Neville Street, Tottenham
Court Road. It is, I fear, a poor neighborhood."
"No worse than Madame Dubois'," Mimo hastened to reassure her,
"and London is giving me new ideas."
Mirko coughed harshly with a dry sound. Countess Shulski drew him
closer to her and held him tight.
"You got the address from the Grisoldi? He was a kind little old man,
in spite of the garlic," she said.
"Yes, he told us of it, as an inexpensive resting place, until our affairs
prospered, and we came straight there and wrote to you at once."
"I was greatly surprised to receive the letter. Have you any money at all
now, Mimo?"
"Indeed, yes!" And Count Sykypri proudly drew forth eight bits of
French gold from his pocket. "We had two hundred francs when we
arrived. Our little necessities and a few paints took up two of the
twenty-franc pieces, and we have eight of them left! Oh, quite a fortune!

It will keep us until I can sell the 'Apache.' I shall take it to a picture
dealer's to-morrow."
Countess Shulski's heart sank. She knew so well of old how long eight
twenty-franc pieces would be likely to last! In spite of Mirko's care and
watching of his father that gentleman was capable of giving one of
them to a beggar if the beggar's face and story touched him, and any of
the others could go in a present to Mirko or herself--to be pawned later,
when necessity called. The case was hopeless as far as money was
concerned with Count Sykypri.
Her own meager income, derived from the dead Shulski, was always
forestalled for the wants of the family--the little brother whom she had
promised her dead and adored mother never to desert.
For when the beautiful wife of Maurice Grey, the misanthropic and
eccentric Englishman who lived in a castle near Prague, ran off with
Count Mimo Sykypri, her daughter, then aged thirteen, had run with
her, and the pair had been wiped off the list of the family. And Maurice
Grey, after cursing them both and making a will depriving them of
everything, shut himself up in his castle, and steadily drank himself to
death in less than a year. And the brother of the beautiful Mrs. Grey,
Francis Markrute, never forgave her either. He