He went no further. It was enough to him, as he sat opposite her in his evening dress, his rich opal, set with diamonds, flashing on his white shirt-front, his lawn tie, low shoes, white waistcoat—everything in the latest and most expensive style—it was enough for Mr. Jerome Archibald to sit there and smoke his delicate Havana, and reflect that he at least had her promise to do what she could to recommend his boarding-house!
The next day, at dinner, he again suggested, in an offhand way, that Miss Price should turn her attention to portrait-painting. Miss Perkins seriously objected at once.
“Your father would never give his consent,” she said. “There was old Mr. Raymond, who lived on the Poor Farm, because he found portrait-painting didn’t pay.”
“Mr. Raymond painted dreadful, hideous caricatures,” said Elvira. “He painted my mother’s portrait, and father is always throwing him in my face. But I don’t know. I have no one to begin on except aunt, and I have tried and tried, and I can’t get anything but the expression of her spectacles.”
Even Aunt Perkins laughed at this a little.
“Begin on me,” ventured Archibald. “Call it the ‘Portrait of an Ideal Landlord.’”
There was a little pause. The ladies rose without replying, and Archibald followed them into the drawing-room, feeling indefinitely that he had been too forward. As he lit his cigar and sat near an open window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive, quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss Perkins as the days went on into August. The easy sense of accommodation to their new surroundings also amused him.
Archibald returned to the portrait. “I’d rawther like to have one for the dining-room,” he said; “I think it would interest some of my boarders when they come back next winter. I could give you no end of sittings, Miss Price——”
Elvira exhibited some hesitancy: