Rosaleen tried, but not very successfully.
“But come and see him for yourself,” she said. “He’s sure to come in again some afternoon soon.”
“Oh, no!” said Miss Waters, hastily. “I don’t think I will, dear. It would make me too nervous.”
After that she wasn’t seen so often at the studio. She would dart in during the morning, perhaps leaving a pupil at her home, and chat with Rosaleen for a little while, but always on edge, ready to flit away. It made her very happy to observe the happiness of her favourite. And she alone was able to comprehend the things that made up that happiness. She could understand the joy that seized Rosaleen whenever she had been out on a frosty morning, when she crossed the snow-covered Square and entered the room with its crackling fire and saw the two girls working in absolute quiet. She loved even the careless and shiftless housekeeping, the things brought in from the delicatessen, salads in paper boats, cold sliced meats, buns, rolls, cakes. They rarely cooked anything; they went out every night to dinner, either to an Italian table d’hote or to the tea room in the basement; when Enid wasn’t with them, they always asked Miss Waters, and frequently the two English girls who had a dressmaking establishment near by would join them. They were nice, jolly, sophisticated girls and Rosaleen liked them. She used to go now and then to their place, which they call “Fine Feathers,” and they would give her “pointers” about making her own clothes.
The tea room in the basement was kept by the desperately lively girl who had been at the birthday party; she was from the Middle West, and she was blessed with the name of Esther Gosorkus. She had enormous, babyish blue eyes and oily brown hair always done with a wide fillet of blue ribbon. She was enthusiastic and friendly and agreeable beyond belief; she adored everyone. Yet she was able to charge hair-raising prices for her food, and for the Antiques which she also sold down there. Enid always called her The Fool.
“She can’t be a fool,” said Miss Mell. “She’s making pots of money.”
“Plenty of fools can do that,” said Enid. “Set a fool to catch a fool! Of course! They prey on one another.”
Miss Gosorkus’ connection with Art was vague; still she wore smocks and went to studio parties; she talked about the Artists’ Colony, and considered that she belonged to it. She used to come up to the studio rather often, and had to talk to Rosaleen, because the other two gave her no encouragement. But Rosaleen thought her jolly and rather nice, and when she went out marketing, used to stop in at the Tea Room and Antique Shop and buy sandwiches for lunch, or if there were something palatable in course of preparation, she would buy three portions and bring them upstairs to her friends. Not very often, though; for she was fastidious about food, and Miss Gosorkus’ methods seemed to her more than questionable at times. She had to see it all done by Miss Gosorkus and the coloured cook before she would buy.
The mornings generally fled by in work of this unartistic nature, in marketing, in making up the cots, washing the dishes, and “attending to things.” After lunch was eaten and cleared away she would always sit down resolved to work earnestly, but often Lawrence Iverson came in, and while he was there, she dared not draw a line.