“You don’t? Well, my dear child, let me tell you that I certainly think I owe you something for sitting for me so patiently and often. A model costs something, you know, and if you will take this in payment for sitting, why, we’ll call it quits.” He picked up the picture again and advancing toward the model stand dropped on one knee and held it out. “May it please your Majesty to accept this poor offering from you leal knight,” he said.
Elizabeth snatched up a piece of dull brocade from the chair, held it around her so that it made a trailing drapery and swept to the edge of the stand. “We are pleased to accept your offering, Sir Knight,” she said, “and you may kiss our hand.”
This ceremony accomplished, she flung aside the drapery and jumped down. “Oh Mr. Titian,” she said, “I think you are the darlingest artist man that was ever born. Do you really, really think I have earned this? It is so much, so very much nicer to feel that I have.”
“I consider that you surely have earned it,” replied Mr. Kemp. “Let us see if we can find some sort of simple frame for it. You don’t know how much better it will look in a frame.”
“Oh, but that would be too much.”
“Not a bit of it. I have worked over this a little since that first day, and I may give it one or two more touches. You can leave it here and I will see what sort of frame I can find.”
This Elizabeth was ready to do. “If I had searched the world over I couldn’t have found anything I would rather give,” she said, then asked, “Are you very sure, Mr. Titian, that you might not be able to sell it for a great deal of money and that you will not be sorry tomorrow that you gave it to me?”
“Far be it from me to have any such feeling. I have been paid for it in better coin than gold of the realm, my lady. Your gracious appreciation of my poor gift is worth more than pearls and diamonds.”
Mr. Kemp knew that this sort of talk delighted Elizabeth and that it would reassure her as ordinary language might not. She fairly bubbled over with delight as she said: “There isn’t anyone, I don’t care who, that will have anything finer to give. Who cares for silver when they can have pictures?”
“Elfie, my sweet child, you voice my ideas exactly,” Mr. Kemp assured her. “Have I any silver? Not an ounce. I bought my spoons at the Five-and-Ten-cent store and they serve me well. I enjoy my simple fare quite as much while partaking it from—shall we say near-silver, or shall we speak the truth and call it tin?—I repeat: I spurn your gold, and hug my pictures to my heart.” He suited the action to the word.