"Well, how goes it, Billy?" I asked cheerfully, seeing that he was put out. Billy's grumblings always have the effect of cheering me up.
He looked up, scowled, and then resumed his gazing across the Pond. Then he watched the passage of a horse and cart through the water, looked up again, and broke out.
"It goes rottenly--that's how it goes!" he growled. "Do you remember coming into my place one evening when I had a girl sitting for me--tallish girl, with a perfectly exquisite figure--Louie Causton her name was?"
"Well, she's the trouble. I want her--must have her--and I can't get her. She says she isn't sitting any more; her doctor's forbidden it. Her doctor!... The jade's as sound as a bell; she never had a doctor in her life, I'll swear; she just won't sit, doesn't want to. She wheedled that sketch out of me too, the one I was doing that day--walked off with it under her arm--stole it, practically--and now I can't get her for love or money."
This interested me. It interested me so much that to conceal my interest, I made a joke. "Oh? Tried both?" I said; but Billy went on.
"Perhaps she'll change her mind when she finds she's nothing to live on. She'll sit in costume, it appears; some cock and bull story about chills; and she said, Couldn't I paint her in some old supers' duds that she can hire at the Models' Club for sixpence a day?--me painting theatrical wardrobes _à la_ Coleman, Roma?... And her crochet!"
"Her crochet? Why, when I told her she wouldn't make fifteen shillings a week as Marguerite with the jewel-casket--she's not pretty--I told her so--she said she could fall back on her crochet! A goddess, I tell you ... and she pitches me a tale about a doctor that she can't help laughing at herself!"
He ran on, to Louie's detriment from his special point of view, but already I was wondering what her own point of view might be.
That I had not heard from Louie since that night of the Berkeley dinner had been, as far as it went, reassuring. Had she needed me, or I her, whichever in the tangled circumstances it might be, I should have heard from her; and I had had no reason for seeking her out. When Evie had told me that Louie now had charge of Kitty Windus she had told me nothing that I had not already known; and as Evie had had this from Miriam Levey, I find I must break off for a moment to speak of my relation with that lady.