"Quelle langue! quelle langue est la langue Américaine!" sniffed the elder Swede, wiping off a brushful of "turps" in her back hair.
Paletta twisted her head so as to peer through the forest of easels at the last speaker.
"What daubs she must make!" she thought, gazing at spectacled green eyes and hay-colored hair à la Chinoise with her fixed idea that "an artistic nature always wrought a semblance of its own beauty upon its outward form."
"What was the Greek religion?" questioned a girlish voice.
Paletta twisted her neck again. "What lovely ideals must blossom upon her canvases!" she thought as she saw a fair vision of rose-tints, creamy texture and sculptured lines ensphered in a halo of golden hair.
"Who is that poor woman who has so mistaken her vocation?" she asked with compassionate gesture toward the coiffure à la Chinoise.
"That? Oh, that's the celebrated Swedish artist, Miss Thingumbobbia, of whom you have heard, of course. She returns to Stockholm next week to paint the king's portrait. Mon Dieu! but I would give all my hair for the genius of her little finger!" answered pretty Mademoiselle Hubert, scraping her palette viciously, as if it were responsible for her artistic inferiority to the gifted Thingumbobbia.
"O-o-o-h!" gasped Paletta. "But who is the sweet creature with golden hair, who looks infused with fair ideals to her very finger-tips?"
