"Then Lemon said one night that Devlin was going to paint our portraits.
"'He sha'n't paint mine,' I cried, 'not if he orfered to frame it in dymens!'
"The words was no sooner out of my lips than I turned almost to a jelly at hearing Devlin's voice at the back of me, saying,
"'Nonsense, nonsense, Mrs. Lemon! Surely it ain't me you're speaking of? Don't they paint all the Court beauties, and ain't you as good as the best of them? Your face is like milk and roses, and I'm the artist that's going to do justice to it. You can't refuse me; you won't have the heart to refuse me.'
"Which I hadn't, with him so close to me. He seemed to take the backbone out of me; I used to feel quite limp when he took me up like that. He did paint my picture, and there it is, stuck on the wall; and though it's come over me a hunderd times to drag it down and burn it, it's more than I dare do for fear of something dreadful happening.
"I can't describe what I went through while that picture was being painted. There was I, setting like a stature in the position that Devlin placed me; and there was Lemon, leaning for'ard, with his hands clarsping the arms of his chair, and his eyes glaring like a ghost's; and there was Devlin, waving his brush and painting me, making all sorts of strange remarks, and singing all sorts of songs in all sorts of languages. He could do that, sir; I don't believe there's a language in the world that he can't speak, and I don't believe there's anything in the world, or out of it, for that matter, that he doesn't know. "Now, where did he get it all from?
"I used to wonder about his age. It was a regular puzzler. Sometimes he looked quite young, and sometimes he looked as old as Methusalem. I plucked up courage once to ask him.
"'What do you say to twenty?' he answered. 'Or if that won't do, what do you say to eighty, or a couple of hunderd?'
"When my portrait was finished he pretended to go into egstacies over it, and said that it really ought to be egshibited.
"'Mind you keep it as a airloom,' he said. 'You've no notion what it's worth.'