But I mustn’t think for a moment that they were slackers. Not a bit of it. As a maffact, they worked frightfully hard. But artists, I must remember, don’t divide up their lives into work and play as other people do—clerks and merchants and lawyers and so on: they mix the two together. That’s what makes them so delightful.
“They all have such charming things,” she said, looking round at my furniture—Victorian mostly, not old enough to be beautiful—with a kind of disdain. “No matter how poor they are, they always seem to have money for ‘bits.’ They’re always on the look-out for them, and they have such wonderful eyes. They can see things under inches of dust. Going about among the old furniture and old curiosity shops with Vera and her friends was an education, and such a lark too! You and I must go over to Lowcester, Dombeen, and rout about in the old shops there. I know so much more about things than I did a month ago. I know the difference between Heppelwhite and Chippendale and Spode and Crown Derby. And I mean to learn it all.”
She had been to the National Gallery three times, and to the Tate, and to several little exhibitions, and to the Café Royal one evening, and to two plays. But the most terrific thing of all was this—she had seen John.
“John who?” I asked.
“Not John anything,” she replied, shocked at my ignorance. “It’s his last name, but no one ever calls him anything else—John the artist: much the strongest painter we’ve got. Vera asked him to come and see my things, and he came and he likes them. He says I ought to make a real name if I study properly and go to a life class and devote myself to drawing for a while. It’s my drawing that’s weak, he says.”
It was then that Rose suddenly asked, after a brief silence, “How much money have I got?”
I told her that she had no money at all, unless her father chose to give her any. He reimbursed me more or less for what she cost me, and her school accounts and so forth had gone to him. It was all very irregular; of course she ought to have an allowance by this time. She was eighteen.
Her face lost its radiance. “Must I ask him?” she said.
“It depends on what you want it for,” I answered.
“I want to live in Chelsea,” she said, “and really learn to paint.”