“That’s really awfully nice, the way you’ve got that line,—” she pointed with one long, slim charcoal-smudged finger.
“Do you think so? Thank you,” said Ruth.
“Krakowski’s lovely to work from, anyway. I’d love to paint him. He’s got such an interesting head.”
“Yes—it distracted me from my work a little,” admitted Ruth. “Why, you’ve almost got a finished sketch,” she continued, looking at Dorothy’s board.
“I always work fast,” admitted Dorothy, “but I’ll do it all over again a dozen times before the week is finished.”
“I wonder how she happened to take up art,” said Ruth, nodding toward the broad back of the fat lady with the dyed hair.
“Oh, she’s—she’s just one of the perpetual students—they say she’s been coming here for ten years—didn’t they have any perpetual students where you came from? But perhaps this is your first year?”
“No, I studied a year in the Indianapolis Art School and we didn’t have any perpetual art students. Is the one with grey hair a perpetual student, too?”
“Yes; we had one, a man too, in San Francisco where I came from.”
“Why do they do it? Isn’t it rather pitiful, or are they rich women with a fad?”