"What is it? Have you any one depending upon you? A parent perhaps? Or a brother or sister?"
"No, I have no one like that. I stand alone!" Doris sighed deeply. When Alice was talking of her brother she had said to herself, "If I had only a relation to work for like that how happy I should be!"
"Poor Doris!--you will allow me to call you Doris, won't you?--you shall never stand alone any more. I will be your friend."
"Will you? But perhaps you wouldn't, if you knew all. I am under a cloud, and I cannot--cannot tell you everything."
Alice looked quickly and searchingly at her, as the unhappy words fell slowly, tremulously from her lips; and there was that in Doris's expression which reassured the artist's sister.
"Tell me nothing if you prefer," she said, "but come and work with me every day here. You shall be well paid, and you will have my friendship----"
"Which will be worth more than the pay!" cried Doris delightedly. "Oh, how glad I am! How very glad I am! I thank you a thousand times!" In the intensity of her gratitude she raised the other's hand to her lips.
Deeply touched, Alice threw her arms round her neck and kissed her. "Now we are friends," she said, "and chums! We shall get through lots of work together."
When they were a little calmer Doris explained the process, as she called it, by which her "pot-boilers" were made. She bought prints, both plain and coloured, and mounted them on stretched canvas frames, or on thick mill-boards, being very careful to exclude all air bubbles from between the board and the paper. Then she carefully rubbed the edges with sandpaper, in order to conceal the edge of paper; and afterwards the surface was covered with a solution of prepared gelatine, upon which the picture was easily coloured with paint, and made to look as much as possible like a genuine oil-painting. The coloured prints were less trouble, because they had simply to be painted as they really were underneath the gelatine. The plain prints, on the other hand, required taste and judgment in the selection of colour and its arrangement.
Doris was able to do this last extremely well, as she knew how to paint much better than Alice, who had never attempted anything of the sort before she embarked on her present undertaking. For Alice had only watched her brother painting, and his method was widely different from hers. The dealers who bought her pictures paid £2 a dozen for them, and took them away to frame and sell for at least fifteen shillings or £1 each. That the sale of them was good was evidenced by the dealers' quick return to the garret with further orders.