“It’s on’y justice, sir, and I ain’t set going on for twenty years for artists without knowing a good picture when I see one. But that ain’t business, sir. You want a model, sir, and that Miss Montesquieu, as she calls herself, won’t be here for a month or two, and you needn’t expect her. Did you try her as Mr Pacey calls the Honourable Miss Brill?”
“Pish! I don’t want to paint a fishwife, man.”
“No, sir, you don’t; and of course Miss Varsey Vavasour wouldn’t do?”
“No, no, no! there is not one of them I’d care to have, Jaggs. If I go on with the figure, I shall work from some cast at first, and finish afterward from a model.”
“No, sir, don’t, pr’y don’t,” cried Jaggs. “You’ll only myke it stiff and hard. It wouldn’t be worthy on you, Mr Dale, sir; and besides, there ain’t no need. You’re a lion, sir, a reg’lar lion ’mong artisses, sir, and you was caught in a net, sir, and couldn’t get free, and all the time, sir, there was a little mouse a nibblin’ and a nibblin’ to get you out, sir, though you didn’t know it, sir, and that mouse’s nyme was Jaggs.”
“What! You don’t mean to say you know of a suitable model?”
“But I just do, sir. That’s what I do say, sir.”
“No, no,” cried Armstrong peevishly. “I don’t want to be worried into seeing one of your friends, Jaggs. Your taste and mine are too different for a lady of your choice to suit my work.”
“Don’t s’y that, sir,” cried Jaggs, in an aggrieved tone of voice. “I’m on’y a common sort o’ man, I own, sir, but I do know a good model when I see one—I mean one as shows breed. I don’t mean one o’ your pretty East End girls, with the bad stock showing through, but one as has got good furren breed in her.”
“Is this a foreign woman, then?”