Their purchases, though guided by the practical Dorothy, were rather like a college girl’s spread. Dorothy lived in an old-fashioned white house on the south side of the square—a house in which every piece of decrepit furniture seemed to have been dragged from its individual attic and assembled here in vast inharmony. Yet mingled with the 1830 atrocities were a few “good” things, left from time to time by artists and writers whom prosperity had called to better quarters. Dorothy lived at the top of the house in one of the two rooms facing the square.
“You see it isn’t really a studio,” she explained apologetically. “But it has got north light and the sloping room and that bit of skylight makes it quite satisfactory, and then, too, I face the Square and can always see the fountain and the Washington arch and the first green that comes on the trees in May, and I like it. And just because we’re celebrating I’ll put a charcoal fire in the grate and we’ll make tea in the samovar, but first we must take care of the flowers.”
For a few minutes she seemed to have forgotten all her troubles.
“I do wish I had a pretty vase. It’s almost criminal to put roses in this old jug. Don’t you think the samovar’s pretty? Nels did get me that. Wait a minute; I’ll show you his studio. It’s the next room to this and just like it. He never locks his door.”
She stepped out, Ruth following, and pushed open the only half closed door of a room, the exact counterpart in size of her own, but rather more comfortable as to furnishings.
“That’s her picture; she must have given it to him last week. I haven’t been in his studio for days and we used to have such corking times together—I worked here more often than in my own room and he always seemed to like having me—”
Fearing a return of tears Ruth hastily retreated to Dorothy’s room. Besides she didn’t feel quite comfortable about entering a man’s room during his absence and examining his pictures.
“Let’s not think about her; it’s just a phase and he’ll recover and come back to you,” she comforted.
“You make the tea and I’ll spread this little table,” she continued, removing a pile of sketches to the floor.
In a short space of time there was a real fire burning in the tiny grate, throwing a ruddy glow on the burnished brass of the samovar; in the small room the roses shed a heavy sweet perfume and the two girls chatted cosily over their tea cups. Dorothy smoked a cigarette.