“Shabby! If you knew how good-looking you were at a three-eighths’ angle you would be grateful to me! You did have such an inspired look for a little while,—before you got disgusted, and began to wash out.”
“Jane Rhoades did an awfully pretty thing—a white bird with a boy running after it. But I felt perfectly certain that the little wretch had a gun in his other hand!”
“What a fiery head you gave your angel, Mattie Stiles! He looked like Loge in Rheingold!”
“I don’t care,” said Mattie, in a tone of 82 voice that showed that she did care very much indeed. “I do like red hair, and we haven’t had a chance to paint any all winter.”
“Red hair wouldn’t make Titians of us,” sighed Miss Isabella Ricker, who was of a despondent temperament.
“It wouldn’t be any hindrance, anyhow!” Mattie insisted.
Meanwhile the half-hour was drawing to a close. A general air of rough order had descended upon the studio. The girls were sitting or standing about in groups, their remarks getting more disjointed and irrelevant as the nervousness of anticipation grew upon them. Madge and Eleanor had found a seat on the steps of the platform. The former was making a pencil sketch of Miss Isabella Ricker, who had abandoned herself to dejection in a remote corner of the room. Madge looked up suddenly, and found that Eleanor was watching her work.
“Your thing is very interesting,” she remarked, in a reserved tone, which, nevertheless, sent the colour mounting slowly 83 up her friend’s sensitive cheek. They both understood that no more commendatory adjective than “interesting” was to be found in the art-student’s vocabulary.
“You’re partial, Madge.”
“Not a bit of it. But I know an interesting thing when I see it. If you win the prize,” she asked abruptly, “what shall you do with the money?”