"No." Buck sighed. If he had only known her when she was a young girl! But the whims of the Scarisbricks were still the Scarisbricks' whims, and as such above his judgment. "But I want to see this Mr. Izzard," he added grimly.
"That you certainly sha'n't," Louie replied promptly. "Fancy your taking me round everywhere I go!"
"Everywhere?" Buck repeated, alarmed anew.
"Of course. If it's a business it's a business. Why, Mr. Izzard alone would be—dreadful! It's no good, daddy; you can't change my mind."
He saw that he could not, but he still tried. It only delayed a little her carrying of her point. In the end—well, she was her mother's daughter. There was no more to be said.
So she began to make the round of the Chelsea studios, and presently moved, with Céleste and the boy, to more comfortable quarters in Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction. This took her farther from her work in Chelsea, but brought her nearer to the Lambeth and Westminster Schools of Art, where also she obtained sittings, sometimes during the day, sometimes in the evenings also. She sat for Billy when Billy could afford to pay her. "No, no—no tick, Billy," she told him once; "I don't do this for amusement." Of the boy Billy knew nothing.... Buck, still strongly averse from the whole proceeding, at first refused to hear her gossip of the day's work; but, as his silence did not alter matters, little by little he began to come round. Soon they exchanged experiences quite freely. He told her what Sopley had said about his deltoid, Henson about his thigh. "You vain old daddy!" she said, stroking his cheek, "I believe for two pins you'd do it again!" She took a pleasure in fondly shocking him in the same sort. Sometimes he mused long. You will admit that it was something to muse over. And so—well, so Louie, throwing acquirements aside with her clothes, became, by virtue of her peculiar commodity, economically emancipated. As female models, women are eminently better than men.
She did fairly well at it. So well did she do that from the three rooms in Lavender Hill (the third one Céleste's) piece by piece her landlady's furniture began to disappear. Her own took its place. She intended, when she had enough of her own, to save the difference in rent between furnished and unfurnished quarters by taking a small flat. So her two chests of drawers and her wardrobe were her own; so were much of her cutlery and bed and table linen; and so, of course, were Jimmy's various paraphernalia. But she was not ready to leave yet. The summer of 1900, she thought, would be early enough.
And in one particular at least she was now able to hold up her head. She still owed money both to Buck and Chaff, but she knew as much about the struggle for a livelihood as Richenda Earle herself. And she had not grizzled. Life had not knocked her out. She was her father's daughter after all.
And yet, once more, she felt herself her mother's daughter too. The reason, which was not very far to seek, was this:
The earlier stages of that furtive romance that in the end had left her former husband no Rest but the Grave were known only to Mrs. Chaffinger herself. Henson had not guessed them; Lord Moone had seen only the resultant scandal of them. But Louie understood a little now. She could at least guess what had happened to her mother between her first setting eyes on the splendid Buck and that final petulant, pathetic cry: "Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me!" By sympathy she was able now to divine the sighs, the half-acknowledged longings, the half-shamed daydreams, the revulsions, the sinkings back again. For Louie now knew something of these things within herself.