This was received by the artist with a deprecating murmur, and by his public with warm expressions of approval.
"Happily in this case," Popple began ("as in that of so many of my sitters," he hastily put in), "there has been no need to idealize-nature herself has outdone the artist's dream."
Undine, radiantly challenging comparison with her portrait, glanced up at it with a smile of conscious merit, which deepened as young Jim Driscoll declared:
"By Jove, Mamie, you must be done exactly like that for the new music-room."
His wife turned a cautious eye upon the picture.
"How big is it? For our house it would have to be a good deal bigger," she objected; and Popple, fired by the thought of such a dimensional opportunity, rejoined that it would be the chance of all others to. "work in" a marble portico and a court-train: he had just done Mrs. Lycurgus Ambler in a court-train and feathers, and as THAT was for Buffalo of course the pictures needn't clash.
"Well, it would have to be a good deal bigger than Mrs. Ambler's," Mrs. Driscoll insisted; and on Popple's suggestion that in that case he might "work in" Driscoll, in court-dress also—("You've been presented? Well, you WILL be,—you'll HAVE to, if I do the picture—which will make a lovely memento")—Van Degen turned aside to murmur to Undine: "Pure bluff, you know—Jim couldn't pay for a photograph. Old Driscoll's high and dry since the Ararat investigation."
She threw him a puzzled glance, having no time, in her crowded existence, to follow the perturbations of Wall Street save as they affected the hospitality of Fifth Avenue.
"You mean they've lost their money? Won't they give their fancy ball, then?"
Van Degen shrugged. "Nobody knows how it's coming out That queer chap Elmer Moffatt threatens to give old Driscoll a fancy ball—says he's going to dress him in stripes! It seems he knows too much about the Apex street-railways."