Mrs. Spaulding put out her hand to him, unexpectedly.
"I'm afraid you're going to be very lonely here at first," she said.
"I have my work," he answered wearily--though the thought of it came almost with joy.
"But you can't live by work alone. And if you'll let us, I thought we might give you a little house-warming. Won't you let Cordelia and me join you in your first dinner here?"
Mrs. Spaulding had made a discovery. She had found that her scholar responded only to sincerity, but then, inevitably; and here she had been assailing him with her levity. She mentioned the many little details of how they should have their dinner prepared. Then she turned to him, and added, as an after-thought:
"Cordelia is a beautiful character, isn't she?" Whereupon, as though fearing his reply, she suddenly looked at her little jeweled watch, and cried with horror: "Good heavens, I'm late for my sitting!" and rustled out to her waiting carriage, not altogether unhappy to get away.
She in twined gold all helmeted, Cuirassed in yielding rose, Let fall from lips of wanton red Three little words, like blows;
And laughed where swayed his spear aloft, For she no arms did wear, And her slim body white and soft Of steel and mail was bare!
We prefer our pessimists young and tender, like asparagus; ten years older and what a bore even Hamlet might have been!--"The Silver Poppy."
Repellier had been prevailed upon to attempt a portrait of Mrs. Alfred Spaulding, and three times a week he came to her house to drink a cup of tea and to work, relaxingly, it is true, on a canvas which was progressing neither fast nor altogether favorably. He had undertaken the task only under gentle protest, for, since that day of mingled alarm and disgust when he beheld two pages of an illustrated weekly given over to what its editor had dared to call The Repellier Girl, the old artist had gone back to his _genre_ work, declaring that he was tired of the American gigantic miniature. So, profitable as he might have found the painting of beautiful gowns and faces in Bishop's whole lengths, he preferred thereafter to regard all labor like that which he was now performing for Mrs. Spaulding as the avocation of a busy life, and not the vocation of an idle one. And in this instance, too, his fair sitter had confided to him that she would like the portrait to be done in secret. It was to be a Christmas present for her husband, and, as she added with an ambiguity that somewhat ruffled the usual equanimity of Repellier, "Alfred is such a jealous-minded creature, besides."