He looked up, scowled, and then resumed his gazing across the Pond. Then he watched the passage of a horse and cart through the water, looked up again, and broke out.
"It goes rottenly—that's how it goes!" he growled. "Do you remember coming into my place one evening when I had a girl sitting for me—tallish girl, with a perfectly exquisite figure—Louie Causton her name was?"
I said that I did remember it.
"Well, she's the trouble. I want her—must have her—and I can't get her. She says she isn't sitting any more; her doctor's forbidden it. Her doctor!... The jade's as sound as a bell; she never had a doctor in her life, I'll swear; she just won't sit, doesn't want to. She wheedled that sketch out of me too, the one I was doing that day—walked off with it under her arm—stole it, practically—and now I can't get her for love or money."
This interested me. It interested me so much that to conceal my interest, I made a joke. "Oh? Tried both?" I said; but Billy went on.
"Perhaps she'll change her mind when she finds she's nothing to live on. She'll sit in costume, it appears; some cock and bull story about chills; and she said, Couldn't I paint her in some old supers' duds that she can hire at the Models' Club for sixpence a day?—me painting theatrical wardrobes à la Coleman, Roma?... And her crochet!"
"What about her crochet?"
"Her crochet? Why, when I told her she wouldn't make fifteen shillings a week as Marguerite with the jewel-casket—she's not pretty—I told her so—she said she could fall back on her crochet! A goddess, I tell you ... and she pitches me a tale about a doctor that she can't help laughing at herself!"
He ran on, to Louie's detriment from his special point of view, but already I was wondering what her own point of view might be.