Miss Waters had become terribly excited when Rosaleen told her.
“My _dear_! Not _Lawrence Iverson_! Right in the same _house_! Isn’t
that marvellous! Now tell me all about him!”
Rosaleen tried, but not very successfully.
“But come and see him for yourself,” she said. “He’s sure to come in
again some afternoon soon.”
“Oh, no!” said Miss Waters, hastily. “I don’t think I will, dear. It
would make me too nervous.”
After that she wasn’t seen so often at the studio. She would dart in
during the morning, perhaps leaving a pupil at her home, and chat with
Rosaleen for a little while, but always on edge, ready to flit away. It
made her very happy to observe the happiness of her favourite. And she
alone was able to comprehend the things that made up that happiness. She
could understand the joy that seized Rosaleen whenever she had been out
on a frosty morning, when she crossed the snow-covered Square and
entered the room with its crackling fire and saw the two girls working
in absolute quiet. She loved even the careless and shiftless
housekeeping, the things brought in from the delicatessen, salads in
paper boats, cold sliced meats, buns, rolls, cakes. They rarely cooked
anything; they went out every night to dinner, either to an Italian
table d’hote or to the tea room in the basement; when Enid wasn’t with
them, they always asked Miss Waters, and frequently the two English
girls who had a dressmaking establishment near by would join them. They
were nice, jolly, sophisticated girls and Rosaleen liked them. She used
to go now and then to their place, which they call “FINE FEATHERS,” and
they would give her “pointers” about making her own clothes.
The tea room in the basement was kept by the desperately lively girl who
had been at the birthday party; she was from the Middle West, and she
was blessed with the name of Esther Gosorkus. She had enormous, babyish
blue eyes and oily brown hair always done with a wide fillet of blue
ribbon. She was enthusiastic and friendly and agreeable beyond belief;
she adored everyone. Yet she was able to charge hair-raising prices for
her food, and for the Antiques which she also sold down there. Enid
always called her The Fool.
“She can’t be a fool,” said Miss Mell. “She’s making pots of money.”
“Plenty of fools can do that,” said Enid. “Set a fool to catch a fool!
Of course! They prey on one another.”
Miss Gosorkus’ connection with Art was vague; still she wore smocks and
went to studio parties; she talked about the Artists’ Colony, and
considered that she belonged to it. She used to come up to the studio
rather often, and had to talk to Rosaleen, because the other two gave
her no encouragement. But Rosaleen thought her jolly and rather nice,
and when she went out marketing, used to stop in at the Tea Room and
Antique Shop and buy sandwiches for lunch, or if there were something
palatable in course of preparation, she would buy three portions and
bring them upstairs to her friends. Not very often, though; for she was
fastidious about food, and Miss Gosorkus’ methods seemed to her more
than questionable at times. She had to see it all done by Miss Gosorkus
and the coloured cook before she would buy.
The mornings generally fled by in work of this unartistic nature, in
marketing, in making up the cots, washing the dishes, and “attending to
things.” After lunch was eaten and cleared away she would always sit
down resolved to work earnestly, but often Lawrence Iverson came in, and
while he was there, she dared not draw a line.
V
Perhaps the very foundation of her satisfaction with life lay in
Lawrence Iverson’s kindness. He would come swaggering up and talk
outrageously, unpardonably to Enid, look with a groan over Miss Mell’s
shoulder and call her work “filth for the hungry hogs.” But he would
look at Rosaleen’s dress designs and simpering fashion plates quite
seriously, and advise her, with wonderfully practical advice.
What most touched her though was his niceness to Miss Waters. The poor
old thing was trapped one day, and couldn’t get away; had to stand there
in all her preposterousness, in her fur coat and her battered hat, and
allow that most elegant and critical artist to be presented to her.
Rosaleen was frightened, thinking of Enid’s rudeness. But Iverson was
_not_ rude; on the contrary he was very polite, very friendly. He talked
to her about Paris, and she was transported to the Seventh Heaven. Just
to recall the names of the streets! (She didn’t know very much else of
the city.) She went off with Rosaleen almost idiotic with pleasure.
“Lawrence,” said Enid, when they had gone, “you make me _sick_!”
“Why?” he enquired, twirling his little mustache.
“You’re a regular, old-fashioned stage villain,” she said. “All the
trouble you’re taking--all the elaborate plots--to get that silly little
kid.”
“Hold your tongue!” he said, flushing angrily. “Let’s have no more of
your beastly female obsessions.”