Part 26 (1/2)

”We can take the river steamer and go to St. Cloud, or go out on the tram to Clamart--the woods there are just exactly like the woods at home. What part of England do you live in?”

”Kent,” said Betty.

”My home's in Devons.h.i.+re,” said Paula.

It was a hard day: so many stairs to climb, so many apartments to see!

And all of them either quite beyond Betty's means, or else little stuffy places, filled to choking point with the kind of furniture no one could bear to live with, and with no light, and no outlook except a blank wall a yard or two from the window.

They kept to the Montparna.s.se quarter, for there, Paula said, were the best ateliers for Betty. They found a little restaurant, where only art students ate, and where one could breakfast royally for about a s.h.i.+lling. Betty looked with interest at the faces of the students, and wondered whether she should ever know any of them. Some of them looked interesting. A few were English, and fully half American.

Then the weary hunt for rooms began again.

It was five o'clock before a _concierge, unexpected amiable_ in face of their refusal of her rooms, asked whether they had tried Madame Bianchi's--Madame Bianchi where the atelier was, and the students'

meetings on Sunday evenings,--Number 57 Boulevard Montparna.s.se.

They tried it. One pa.s.ses through an archway into a yard where the machinery, of a great laundry pulses half the week, up some wide wooden stairs--shallow, easy stairs--and on the first floor are the two rooms. Betty drew a long breath when she saw them. They were lofty, they were airy, they were light. There was not much furniture, but what there was was good--old carved armoires, solid divans and--joy of joys--in each room a carved oak, Seventeenth Century mantelpiece eight feet high and four feet deep.

”I _must_ have these rooms!” Betty whispered. ”Oh, I could make them so pretty!”

The rent of the rooms was almost twice as much as the sum they fixed on, and Paula murmured caution.

”Its no use,” said Betty. ”We'll live on bread and water if you like, but we'll live on it _here_.”

And she took the rooms.

”I'm sure we've done right,” she said as they drove off to fetch her boxes: ”the rooms will be like a home, you see if they aren't. And there's a piano too. And Madame Bianchi, isn't she a darling; Isn't she pretty and sweet and nice?”

”Yes,” said Paula thoughtfully; ”it certainly is something that you've got rooms in the house of a woman like that.”

”And that ducky little kitchen! Oh, we shall have such fun, cooking our own meals! You shall get the dejeuner but I'll cook the dinner while you lie on the sofa and read novels 'like a real lady.'”

”Don't use that expression--I hate it,” said Paula sharply. ”But the rooms are lovely, aren't they?”

”Yes, it's a good place for you to be in--I'm sure of that,” said the other, musing again.

When the boxes were unpacked, and Betty had pinned up a few prints and photographs and sketches and arranged some bright coloured Liberty scarves to cover the walls' more obvious defects--left by the removal of the last tenant's decorations--when flowers were on table and piano, the curtains drawn and the lamps lighted, the room did, indeed, look ”like a home.”

”We'll have dinner out to-night,” said Paula, ”and to-morrow we'll go marketing, and find you a studio to work at.”

”Why not here?”

”That's an idea. Have you a lace collar you can lend me? This is not fit to be seen.”

Betty pinned the collar on her friend.

”I believe you get prettier every minute,” she said. ”I must just write home and give them my address.”