While he was speaking to the children he was thinking, "How beautiful the little girl is! She will do finely. The two will make a great picture. My own children must see them."
Then he went on talking with Tessa. He showed her some curiosities and she soon forgot her bashfulness. But it was a long day. To be sure, the children had a delicious lunch which a servant brought up to the studio. The kind artist insisted they should not touch the food they had brought with them from home.
But after all, it was very tiresome to sit quite still for half an hour at a time. And all the while the strange gentleman's eyes were fixed on them while his hand was busy with the brush.
"This is just a sketch to-day, children. After this, I shall need only one of you at a time. But I like to have you come together, nevertheless. And now your work is over for the day.
"Pretty hard not to move about freely, little one, isn't it?" he said, as he patted Tessa on the chin. Then he rang the bell and told the servant to call his own children up to the studio. He would not have done this if he had not seen that his young models were unlike many of the poor children of the city.
"They are gentle and polite, if they are peasants," he said to himself. "My wife will be pleased, for Lucy and Arthur are lonesome and need some playmates of their own age."
A moment afterward merry voices were heard and the Gray children came skipping into the room.
"They are certainly angels," Tessa said to herself when she saw the golden curls of Lucy and the fair, sweet faces of her brother and herself. But she could not tell what they said, for they spoke in a strange tongue.
"It is not soft like our own dear Italian," she whispered to Beppo. "It is hard, this American language."