She began to potter about the black fire, gabbling without stopping as she did so.
Amory was almost disinterestedly glad to see Dorothy; on such a day she would have been glad to see anybody. For inside the studio was more desolate than the streets without. No longer did that room over the greengrocer’s shop shimmer and twinkle as on the day when she and Cosimo had sat down to their first little supper there. Half the plates that had overlapped so prettily, half the cup that had dangled from the bright hook, were broken; the sink was full of articles awaiting that dreaded washing-up; and in the cupboard forgotten condensed milk tins and brick-like half-loaves turned yellow and green. Amory had cut off Mrs. ’Ill’s daily visit; she now came on Saturdays only, and Cosimo had not been there to give her a hand. By the time Dorothy had drawn up the fire, and, going for the tea-things, had found plates with sardine-tails on their edges and cups with graduations of brown about their rims, she might have been pardoned had she thought tea hardly worth troubling about; but she merely bustled cheerfully about, scraping things into a bucket, clearing the table, sweeping the hearth. All the time she chatted about the Ararat Extra Light and the photograph of her that would appear in the papers on the morrow. Amory had been shocked to hear that Dorothy had actually consented to this.
“Why not?” Dorothy had demanded. “It won’t have my name on, and by the time the machine men have finished with it, it won’t be either like me or anybody else! My dear, you’re as bad as Aunt Emmie. Hang my family! Would any of them buy me a pair of Japhet Boots? My dear, I have to dress myself well: I can’t afford to go about in rags! You don’t suppose I buy my clothes, do you? Why, you couldn’t get these stockings for thirty shillings! I don’t mean that I get photographed for every stitch I have on, but I have to get things one way or another!”
Amory sighed to be the possessor of a relentless intellect. It was a heavy burden. Far, far happier were they, the simpler ones, whose nature it was to laugh lazily and good-humouredly while others shouldered the responsibility of the world. They did not even know that in order that they might dance somebody else must weep. Dorothy had condemned herself. All sorts of people could put forward that plea of hers, “I have to get things one way and another.” Amory wanted to know what Dorothy gave the world in return. She, Amory, gave her art; but Dorothy would surely hardly claim that those fashion-drawings of hers could not quite well be got along without. Therefore it was even a little sorrowfully that Amory asked Dorothy how she was getting along at the studio.
“Please don’t tread on my new Ararat!” Dorothy cried in fright. “Sorry; my fault for leaving it there.... The studio? Oh, I’m under Miss Benson, of course; it would be a shame to turn her out of a job, and Miss Umpleby would come next anyway; so I just potter along. As a matter of fact, I’m only in the studio about half my time; it’s much more fun downstairs, talking over ideas with Mr. Miller. You wouldn’t suppose, would you, Amory,” she said suddenly, both earnestly and excitedly, “that as I stand here now, filling this teapot, I’ve got an idea worth—I don’t know how much, but certainly Doubledays’ would give me a thousand for it, if Hallowells’ won’t take it, and I should want a pretty stiff contract even then?”
With her hair all rumpled by the Ararat cap and her feet in Cosimo’s old slippers she certainly did not look worth a thousand.
“Sorry I can’t tell you what it is,” she went on, setting down the teapot, thumbing a hard half-loaf and selecting a softer one. “I haven’t told Mr. Miller yet. We have to choose our time for these things; wait for the ripe moment. Wait till Hallowells’ get their last storey up and the roof on, then we’ll see. Mr. Miller thinks I’m just a person who makes a useful suggestion now and then, and I let him think so; but wait a bit. Something better than Benny’s place for me!”——
“But—but—I don’t understand. Is this fashion-drawing?” Amory asked.
“Oh, dear no!” Dorothy replied, drawing up a chair to the table. “Let it stand a minute first—stir it with a spoon.... I don’t mean fashion-drawing now. You see, Hallowells’ are going to wake London up. Mr. Miller’s pretty good at his job—waking London up—in other words, advertising, and I’m only a fashion-artist a long as there’s nothing better going. It will probably come off next Spring—depends how they get on with the building; and I’ll buy a picture from you then, Amory.”