“Well, I don’t see anything to boast of in that,” pronounced Bubbles, puffing at his long hookah. “She’s only a feeble female imitation of Tarmigan. Her color’s muddy, and her brother comes into all her men’s heads.”
“I suppose she can’t afford models,” said the Irishman, charitably. “Have a banbury.”
Bubbles accepted, and the by-standers helped to empty the bag. Matt moved back towards his easel, passing a little dark man with a mane, who was explaining to a derisive audience that the reason he went to music-halls was to study character, and brushing by a weedy giant, who was boasting that he hardly ever went to bed, so tied was he to his anatomy. During his progress a meagre, wrinkled old man, with pepper-and-salt hair and a stoop, approached him, and said, in a husky whisper:
“Excuse me introducin’ myself, but I do admire your feet so!”
Matt flushed, startled.
“My name’s Gregson—William Gregson—and I’ve made a speciality of feet. The ’uman form divine is beautiful everywhere, sir, but the foot—ah! there you have the combination of graces, all the beautiful curves in a small compass; the arch of the foot, the ankle, instep, the beautiful proportions of it all when you do get a really beautiful foot such as yours. I come here, sir, every night to study the beautiful—for in daily life the foot is ’idden, distorted by boots and shoes that ignore the subtleties and delicacies of nature—and the foot is the first thing I look at; but how rarely does a model, man or woman, ex’ibit a truly beautiful foot! Oh, how I wish I could paint your foot, or take a cast of it—a study from the nude, of course! But no—you will not allow me, I know. May I at least be allowed to measure it, to take the proportions, to add to my knowledge of the laws of the beautiful foot?”
Matt faltered that he didn’t know he had anything extraordinary in the way of feet.
“My dear sir!” protested William Gregson, showing the whites of his eyes.
Just then the light was turned up, and William Gregson retreated abruptly to his easel. The model’s court scattered, and she herself resumed her inglorious occupation of the throne, placing her feet within a chalked-out line, and her arm against a mark in the sheet.
Matt, returning to his canvas, worked enthusiastically to finish the figure by closing-time, and laid down his brush with some minutes to spare, thereby drawing upon himself the attention of his mentor, who exclaimed: