“This you will see is undoubtedly French. You could tell it by the anatomy of the cats, if in no other way. Such creatures were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Jim got it for me. The real name of the work of art is ‘Lait Pur Sterilisé;’” and as she paused for a moment, they all gazed with fitting admiration on the child in a red dress drinking from a bowl under the envious eyes of three cats.
“Well, it’s better,” said Polly, “than some of those greenery yallery things. No wonder Aubrey Beardsley died young.”
“Oh, Polly, you artless creature, didn’t you dote on the Yellow Book?”
“Not I,” replied Polly. “I measured Mrs. Patrick Campbell as once portrayed there, and in proportion to the length of her head as there shown she must be about ten feet tall.”
“Why, Polly, I didn’t realize that you knew so much about Art.”
“Oh, I know more things than I am sometimes credited with,” and there was an undertone of deeper meaning in Polly’s voice.
“Here’s a Grasset,” continued Clarissa, resuming her explanations. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
“No, no, Clarissa,” said Julia, “I like this better;” and rising, she put her hand on a poster with a Puritan maiden carrying mistletoe.
“You show your taste,” said Clarissa, “that’s a Rhead.” Though hung near Dudley Hardy’s “Gaiety Girl” in poster land, the two did not seem inharmonious neighbors. Not far from them was Bemliardt’s Jeanne d’Arc, and for fifteen minutes or more Clarissa kept her friends amused with the poster show. Before her art lecture was quite at an end, Julia as assistant hostess had lit the lamp under the chafing-dish, and then when the others found that fudge-making was the next thing on the programme, each one wished to offer her own receipt, and to the great surprise of the company it was found that each receipt varied a little from the others.
“First you grate a pound of chocolate into the chafing-dish,” began Polly.