XLIII
I FINISHED my copies in four days, and they were scarcely dry when I carried them down to Jacobs. He examined them as if he were buying some material by the yard. I felt very nervous as he looked at them. Then he grunted, went over to his desk and wrote me a check for thirty dollars and fifteen cents. Menna told me he sold them for a couple of hundred if not more. He handed me the check with the remark:
“They will do. It takes a man to do a piece of work right.”
For a time Menna had very little work for me. There were slack times when he had not enough for himself, and he would get very discouraged. Sometimes he would gather up all the paintings he had made and say:
“Go and slaughter them to those damned frame-makers, Ascough, and sell them for what you can get—anything.”
I would remonstrate with him, and point out that if he would wait and not be in such a hurry for his money we could get better prices.
“Hang it all,” he would shout, “what’s the use?”
So long as he had a few dollars to sit at some table with friends and order beer, he would sacrifice, or as he called it “slaughter,” anything and everything.
As work was now very scarce, I decided to see Fisher about the posing. So I went across the hall and knocked at his door.
“Hello, Miss Ascough,” he called out cheerily, as I came in. “Come on in and sit down. You seem pretty busy in Menna’s studio. What are you doing for him?”