And the mother was as fluttered as her daughter at this sudden appeal. "Alice looks lovely," she broke out. "You know so well how to make the best of people. I've never seen her so beautiful."
"It's the beautiful accessories that produce the effect," stammered Alice.
"They certainly produce some effect," conceded Wyndham. "That is why they are there. But it's you I'm painting, Miss Robinson. You are the picture, and the picture will be you—and not the surroundings."
He had arranged his palette, and fell to with the brush in earnest, bidding her speak the moment she felt fatigued. And, indeed, he insisted on her resting frequently, though she struggled bravely to keep the spells of work as long as possible, and confessed to cherishing ambitions in that direction.
Altogether the ladies were enchanted with their experience. Like Mr. Robinson, they had never before visited a studio, and it stirred them with a sense of play rather than of work, suggesting to them endless fun and merriment. Pleased with the promise of the picture itself, Wyndham chatted to them charmingly. Miss Robinson, reassured and encouraged by his gracious suavity, soon felt at her ease, and spoke more freely than was her wont at any time. A shade of animation came into her features, and she was ready to break into a laugh at a jest, or to listen to a more serious little disquisition with the intensest absorption. They were not infrequent these charming little disquisitions of Wyndham's, and his visitors thought it wonderful (and told him so with engaging frankness) that he should be able to go on speaking so beautifully, and yet never relax his attention from the painting.
He did not prolong the whole sitting beyond two hours, when he expressed himself delighted with this beginning, and offered them tea.
They accepted eagerly. "Will you be making it, Mr. Wyndham?" they asked, their eyes shining with amusement.
"Oh, I'm an old hand at it," he assured them. He threw open a door which they had imagined to indicate a cupboard. "Kitchen, scullery, and every kind of domestic office rolled into one," he explained, and promptly disappeared inside it. They came peeping in gleefully, fascinated by the rough white-washed doll's interior with its miniature dresser, and they watched him fill his kettle and put together the tea-things. Then he emerged, set the kettle over the fire, spread the table with a fresh cloth, and emptied a large bag of cakes on to a fascinating plate of old-seeming majolica.
"How nice!" said Miss Robinson, her face shining with make-believe gluttony.
"There are some chocolate fingers among them—just the sort you like," said her mother.