“Thank you,” the Colonel said. “I would love it.”
“It is very romantic. My hair is twice as long as it has ever been and I look as though I were rising from the sea without the head wet. Actually, you rise from the sea with the hair very flat and coming to points at the end. It is almost the look of a very nearly dead rat. But Daddy paid him adequately for the portrait, and, while it is not truly me, it is the way you like to think of me.”
“I think of you when you come from the sea too.”
“Of course. Very ugly. But you might like to have this portrait for a souvenir.”
“Your lovely mother would not mind?”
“Mummy would not mind. She would be glad to be rid of it, I think. We have better pictures in the house.”
“I love you and your mother both very much.”
“I must tell her,” the girl said.
“Do you think that pock-marked jerk is really a writer?”
“Yes. If Ettore says so. He loves to joke but he does not lie. Richard, what is a jerk? Tell me truly.”
“It is a little rough to state. But I think it means a man who has never worked at his trade (oficio) truly, and is presumptuous in some annoying way.”
“I must learn to use the term properly.”
“Don’t use it,” the Colonel said.
Then the Colonel asked, “When do I get the portrait?”
“Tonight if you wish it. I’ll have someone wrap it and send it from the house. Where will you hang it?”
“In my quarters.”
“And no one will come in and make remarks and speak badly of me?”
