Part 9 (1/2)

”Then it is a pity she isn't a model,” said Mariana.

”An example of the eternal contrariness of things,” responded Mr.

Nevins. ”All the good-looking ones want to paint and all the ugly ones want to be painted.” Then he rumpled his flaxen head. ”In this confounded century everything is in the wrong place, from a woman to her waist-line.”

After this Mariana accompanied Miss Freighley on students' day to the Metropolitan Museum, and watched her make a laborious copy of ”The Christian Martyr.” Upon returning she was introduced to Miss Hill and Miss Oliver, who shared the apartment, and was told to make herself at home.

Then, one rainy Sat.u.r.day afternoon there was a knock at her door, and, opening it, she found Miss Freighley upon the outside.

”It is our mending afternoon,” she said, ”and we want you to come and sit with us. If you have any sewing to do, just bring it.”

Mariana picked up her work-basket, and, finding that her thimble was missing, began rummaging in a bureau-drawer.

”I never mend anything until I go to put it on,” she said. ”It saves so much trouble.”

Then she found her thimble and followed Miss Freighley into the hall.

Miss Freighley laughed in a pretty, inconsequential way. She had a soft, monotonous voice, and spoke with a marked elimination of vowel sounds.

”We take the last Sat.u.r.day of the month,” she said. ”Only Juliet and I do Gerty's things, because she can't sew, and she cleans our palettes and brushes in return.”

She swung open the door of the apartment, and they entered a room which served as studio and general lounging-room in one.

A tall girl, sitting upon the hearth-rug beside a heap of freshly laundered garments, stood up and held out a limp, thin hand.

”I told Carrie she would find you,” she said, speaking with a slight drawl and an affected listlessness.

She was angular, with a consumptive chest and narrow shoulders. She wore her hair--which was vivid, like flame, with golden ripples in the undulations--coiled confusedly upon the crown of her head. Her name was Juliet Hill. A mistaken but well-known colorist had once traced in her a likeness to Rossetti's ”Beata Beatrix.” The tracing had resulted in the spoiling of a woman without the making of an artist.

Mariana threw herself upon a divan near the hearth-rug and looked down upon the pile of clothes.

”What a lot of them!” she observed, sympathetically.

Miss Hill drew a stocking from the heap and ran her darning-egg into the heel to locate a hole.

”It is, rather,” she responded, ”but we never mend until everything we have is in rags. I couldn't find a single pair of stockings this morning, so I knew it was time.”

”If you had looked into Gerty's bureau-drawer you might have found them,” said Miss Freighley, seating herself upon the end of the divan.

”Gerty never marks her things, and somehow she gets all of ours.

Regularly once a month I inst.i.tute a search through her belongings, and discover more of my clothes than I knew I possessed. Here, give me that night-gown, Juliet. The laundress tore every bit of lace off the sleeve.

What a shame!”

Mariana removed a guitar from the couch and leaned back among the pillows, glancing about the room. The walls were covered with coa.r.s.e hangings, decorated in vague outlines of flying cranes and vaguer rushes. Here and there were tacked groups of unframed water-colors and drawings in charcoal--all crude and fanciful and feminine. Upon a small shelf above the door stood a plaster bust, and upon it a dejected and moth-eaten raven--the relic of a past pa.s.sion for taxidermy. In the centre of the room were several easels, a desk, with Webster's Unabridged for a foot-stool, and a collection of palettes, half-used tubes of paint, and una.s.sorted legs and arms in plaster.

”How do you ever find anything?” asked Mariana, leaning upon her arm.

”We don't,” responded a small, dark girl, coming from the tiny kitchen with a dish of cooling caramels in her hand; ”we don't find, we just lose.” She placed the dish upon the table and drew up a chair. ”I would mortgage a share of my life if I could turn my old mammy loose in here for an hour.”

”Gerty used to be particular,” explained Miss Freighley; ”but it is a vicious habit, and we broke her of it. Even now it attacks her at intervals, and she gets out a duster and goes to work.”