“Mr Dale, sir, you won’t think anything, will you?”
“Eh? What about?”
“’Cause of what I’m going to say, sir,” she said bashfully. “I do want you to get that picture well hung, sir, and make your fortune, and get to be a R.A.”
“Thank you. What were you going to say?”
“Only, sir, as I wouldn’t for any one else; no, not if it was for the Prince o’ Wales, or the Dook o’ Edinburgh hisself, but I would for you.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Dale, wondering at the girl’s manner.
“I meant, sir, as sooner—sooner—than you shouldn’t get that picture done and painted proper, I’d come and stand for that there figure myself.” Dale wanted to burst out laughing at the idea of the poor, ill-nurtured, grubby little creature becoming his model for the mature, graceful Juno; but there was so much genuine desire to help him, so much naïve innocency in the poor little drudge’s words, that he contained himself, and before he could think of how to refuse without hurting her feelings, there was a resonant double knock and ring at the front door.
“Why, if it ain’t the postman again,” cried the girl. “He was here just now. I know: it’s one o’ them mail letters, as they calls ’em, from foreign abroad.”
Keren-Happuch was right, for she came panting up directly with a thin paper envelope in her hand, branded “Boston, U.S.A.”
“For you, sir,” she said; and she looked at him wistfully, as in an emotional way he snatched the letter from her hand and pressed it to his lips.