“I suppose so,” said the girl vaguely.
“He draws those.”
“Is that what you call pot-boiling?”
“One kind.”
“And I suppose it pays just a pittance.”
“Well,” replied the Bonnie Lassie evasively, “he sticks to it, so it must support him.”
“Then I’m going to help him.”
“ ‘To fulfill his destiny,’ is the accepted phrase,” said the Bonnie Lassie wickedly. “I’ll call him in for you to look over. But you’d best leave the arrangements for a later meeting.”
Being summoned, Julien Tenney entered the house as one quite at home despite his smeary garb of the working artist. His presentation to Miss Holland was as brief as it was formal, for she took her departure at once.
“Who is she?” asked Julien, staring after her.
“Bobbie Holland, a gilded butterfly from uptown.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“Good.”
“O Lord!” said he in pained tones. “Has she got a Cause?”
“Naturally.”
“Philanthropist?”
“Worse.”
“There ain’t no sich a animile.”
“There is. She’s a patron of art.”
“Wow!”
“Yes. She’s going to patronize you.”
“Not if I see her first. How do I qualify as a subject?”
“She considered you a wasted life.”
“Where does she get that idea?”
The Bonnie Lassie removed a small, sharp implement from the left eye of a stoical figurine and pointed it at herself.
“Do you think that’s fair?” demanded the indignant youth.
The Bonnie Lassie reversed the implement and pointed it at him. “Do you or do you not,” she challenged, “invade our humble precincts in a five-thousand-dollar automobile?”
“It’s my only extravagance.”
“Do you or do you not maintain a luxurious apartment in Gramercy Park, when you are not down here posing in your attic as an honest working-man?”
“Oh, see here, Mrs. Staten, I won’t stand for that!” he expostulated. “You know perfectly well I keep my room here because it’s the only place I can work in quietly—”
“And because Peter Quick Banta would break his foolish old heart if you left him entirely,” supplemented the sculptress.
Julien flushed and stood looking like an awkward child. “Did you tell all this stuff to Miss Holland?” he asked.
“Oh, no! She thinks that your pot-boiling is a desperate and barely sufficient expedient to keep the wolf from the door. So she is planning to help you realize your destiny.”
“Which is?” he queried with lifted brows.
“To be a great painter.”
The other winced. “As you know, I’ve meant all along, as soon as I’ve saved enough—”
“Oh, yes; I know,” broke in the Bonnie Lassie, who can be quite ruthless where Art is concerned, “and you know; but time flies and hell is paved with good intentions, and if you want to be that kind of a pavement artist—well, I think Peter Quick Banta is a better.”
“Do you suppose she’d let me paint her?” he asked abruptly.
If statuettes could blink, the one upon which the Bonnie Lassie was busied would certainly have shrouded its vision against the dazzling radiance of her smile, for this was coming about as she had planned it from the moment when she had caught the flash of startled surprise and wonder in his eyes, as they first rested on Bobbie Holland. Here, she had guessed, might be the agency to bring Julien Tenney to his artistic senses; and even so it was now working out. But all she said was—and she said it with a sort of venomous blandness—“My dear boy, you can’t paint.”
“Can’t I! Just because I’m a little out of practice—”
“Two years, isn’t it, since you’ve touched a palette?”
“Give me a chance at such a model as she is! That’s all I ask.”
“Do you think her so pretty?” inquired the sculptress disparagingly.
“Pretty? She’s the loveliest thing that—” Catching his hostess’s smile he broke off. “You’ll admit it’s a well-modeled face,” he said professionally; “and—and—well, unusual.”
“Pooh! ‘Dangerous’ is the word. Remember it,” warned the Bonnie Lassie. “She’s a devastating whirlwind, that child, and she comes down here partly to get away from the wreckage. Now, if you play your part cleverly—”
“I’m not going to play any part.”
“Then it’s all up. How is a patroness of Art going to patronize you, unless you’re a poor and struggling young artist, living from hand to mouth by arduous pot-boiling? You won’t have to play a part as far as the pot-boiling goes,” added his monitress viciously. “Only, don’t let her know that the rewards of your shame run to high-powered cars and high-class apartments. Remember, you’re poor but honest. Perhaps she’ll give you money.”
“Perhaps she won’t,” retorted the youth explosively.
“Oh, it will be done tactfully; never fear. I’ll bring her around to see you and you’ll have to work the sittings yourself.”
As a setting for the abode of a struggling beginner, Julien’s attic needed no change. It was a whim of his to keep it bare and simple. He worked out his pictorial schemes of elegance best in an environment where there was nothing to distract the eye. One could see that Miss Roberta Holland, upon her initial visit, approved its stark and cleanly poverty. (Yes, I was there to see; the Bonnie Lassie had taken me along to make up that first party.) Having done the honors, Julien dropped into the background, and presently was curled up over a drawing-board, sketching eagerly while the Bonnie Lassie and I held the doer of good deeds in talk. Now the shrewd and able tribe of advertising managers do not pay to any but a master-draughtsman the prices which “J.T.”—with an arrow transfixing the initials—gets; and Julien was as deft and rapid as he was skillful. Soon appreciating what was in progress, the visitor graciously sat quite still. At the conclusion she held out her hand for the cardboard.
To be a patroness of Art does not necessarily imply that one is an adequate critic. Miss Holland contemplated what was a veritable little gem in black-and-white with cool approbation.
“Quite clever,” she was pleased to say. “Would you care to sell it?”
“I don’t think it would be exactly—” A stern glance from the Bonnie Lassie cut short the refusal. He swallowed the rest of the sentence.
“Would ten dollars be too little?” asked the visitor with bright beneficence.
“Too much,” he murmured. (The Bonnie Lassie says that with a little crayoning and retouching he could have sold it for at least fifty times that.)
The patroness delicately dropped a bill on the table.
“Could you some day find time to let me try you in oils?” he asked.
“Does that