Stately is service accepted, but lovelier service rendered,
Interchange of service the law and condition of Beauty.
A. H. Clough.

Frank Jermyn, whom we have left ringing at the bell, followed Gertrude down the Virginia-cork passage into the waiting-room.

The curtains between this apartment and the studio were drawn aside, displaying a charming picture—Lucy, in her black gown and holland pinafore, her fair, smooth head bent over the re-touching frame; Phyllis, at an ornamental table, engaged in trimming prints, with great deftness and grace of manipulation.

[Pg 94]

Neither of the girls looked up from her work, and Frank took possession of one of the red-legged chairs, duly impressed with the business-like nature of the occasion; although, indeed, it must be confessed that his glance strayed furtively now and then in the direction of the studio and its pleasant prospect.

Gertrude explained that they were quite prepared to undertake studio work. Frank briefly stated the precise nature of the work he had ready for them, and then ensued a pause.

It was humiliating, it was ridiculous, but it was none the less true, that neither of these business-like young people liked first to make a definite suggestion for the inevitable visit to Frank\'s studio.

At last Gertrude said, "You would wish it done to-day?"

"Yes, please; if it be possible."

She reflected a moment. "It must be this morning. There is no relying on the afternoon light. I cannot arrange to go myself, but my sister can, I think. Lucy!"

Lucy came across to them, alert and serene.

"Lucy, would you take number three[Pg 95] camera to Mr. Jermyn\'s studio in York Place?"

"Yes, certainly."

"I have some studies of drapery I should wish to be photographed," added Frank, with his air of steadfast modesty.

"I will come at once, if you like," answered Lucy, calmly.

"You will, of course, allow me to carry the apparatus, Miss Lorimer."

"Thank you," said Lucy, after the least possible hesitation.

Every one was immensely serious; and a few minutes afterwards Mrs. Maryon, looking out from the dressmaker\'s window, saw a solemn young man and a sober young woman emerge together from the house, laden with tripod-stand and camera, and a box of slides, respectively.

"I wish I could have gone myself," said Gertrude, in a worried tone; "but I promised Mrs. Staines to be in for her."

"Yes, he is a nice young man," answered Phyllis, unblushingly, looking up from her prints.

"Oh Phyllis, Phyllis, don\'t talk like a housemaid."

[Pg 96]

"I say, Gerty, all this is delightfully unchaperoned, isn\'t it?"

"Phyllis, how can you?" cried Gertrude, vexed.

The question of propriety was one which she always thought best left to itself, which she hated, above all things, to discuss. Yet even her own unconventional sense of fitness was a little shocked at seeing her sister walk out of the house with an unknown young man, both of them being bound for the studio of the latter.

She was quite relieved when, an hour later, Lucy appeared in the waiting-room, fresh and radiant from her little walk.

"Mrs. Staines has been and gone," said Gertrude. "She worried dreadfully. But what have you done with \'number three?\'"

"Oh, I left the camera at York Place. I am going again to-morrow to do some work for Mr. Oakley, who shares Mr. Jermyn\'s studio."

"Grist for our mill with a vengeance. But come here and talk seriously, Lucy."

Phyllis, be it observed, who never remained long in the workshop, had gone out for a walk with Fan.

"Well?" said Lucy, balancing herself[Pg 97] against a five-barred gate, Fred Devonshire\'s latest gift, aptly christened by Phyllis the White Elephant. "Well, Miss Lorimer?"

"I\'m going to say something unpleasant. Do you realise that this latest development of our business is likely to excite remark?"

"\'That people will talk,\' as Fan says? Oh, yes, I realise that."

"Don\'t look so contemptuous, Lucy. It is unconventional, you know."

"Of course it is; and so are we. It is a little late in the day to quarrel with our bread-and-butter on that ground."

"It is a mere matter of convention, is it not?" cried Gertrude, more anxious to persuade herself than her sister. "Whether a man walks into your studio and introduces himself, or whether your hostess introduces him at a party, it comes to much the same thing. In both cases you must use your judgment about him."

"And whether he walks down the street with you, or puts his arm round your waist, and waltzes off with you to some distant conservatory, makes very little difference. In either case the chances are one knows nothing about him. I am sure half the men one met at dances might have been [Pg 98]haberdashers or professional thieves for all their hostesses knew. And, as a matter of fact, we happen to know something about Mr. Jermyn."

"Oh, I have nothing to say against Mr. Jermyn, personally. I am sure he is nice. It was rather that my vivid imagination saw vistas of studio-work looming in the distance. It was quite different with Mr. Lawrence, you know," said Gertrude, whom her own arguments struck as plausible rather than sound. "One thing may lead to another."

"Yes, it is sure to," cried Lucy, who saw an opportunity for escaping from the detested propriety topic. "To-day, for instance, with Mr. Oakley. He is middle-aged, by the bye, Gerty, and married, for I saw his wife."

They both laughed; they could, indeed, afford to laugh, for, regarded from a financial point of view, the morning had been an unusually satisfactory one.

Gertrude\'s prophetic vision of vistas of studio work proved, for the next few days at least, to have been no baseless fabric of the fancy. The two artists at York Place kept them so busy over models, sketches, and arrangements of drapery, that the girls\'[Pg 99] hands were full from morning till night. Of course this did not last, but Frank was so full of suggestions for them, so genuinely struck with the quality of their work, so anxious to recommend them to his comrades in art, that their spirits rose high, and hope, which for a time had almost failed them, arose, like a giant refreshed, in their breasts.

In all simplicity and respect, the young Cornishman took a deep and unconcealed interest in the photographic firm, and expected, on his part, a certain amount of interest to be taken in his own work.

Frank, as Conny had said, worked chiefly in black and white. He was engaged, at present, in illustrating a serial story for The Woodcut, but he had time on his hands for a great deal more work, time which he employed in painting pictures which the public refused to buy, although the committees were often willing to exhibit them.

"If they would only send me out to that wretched little war," he said. "There is nothing like having been a special artist for getting a man on with the pictorial editors."

[Pg 100]

There is nothing like the salt of healthy objective interests for keeping the moral nature sound. Before the sense of mutual honesty, the little barriers of prudishness which both sides had thought fit in the first instance to raise, fell silently between the young people, never again to be lifted up.

For good or evil, these waifs on the great stream of London life had drifted together; how long the current should continue thus to bear them side by side—how long, indeed, they should float on the surface of the stream at all, was a question with which, for the time being, they did not very much trouble themselves.

No one quite knew how it came about, but before a month had gone by, it became the most natural thing in the world for Frank to drop in upon them at unexpected hours, to share their simple meals, to ask and give advice about their respective work.

Fanny had accepted the situation with astonishing calmness. Prudish to the verge of insanity with regard to herself, she had grown to look upon her strong-minded sisters as creatures emancipated from the ordinary conventions of their sex, as far[Pg 101] removed from the advantages and disadvantages of gallantry as the withered hag who swept the crossing near Baker Street Station.

Perhaps, too, she found life at this period a little dull, and welcomed, on her own account, a new and pleasant social element in the person of Frank Jermyn; however it may be, Fanny gave no trouble, and Gertrude\'s lurking scruples slept in peace.

One bright morning towards the end of January, Gertrude came careering up the street on the summit of a tall, green omnibus, her hair blowing gaily in the breeze, her ill-gloved hands clasped about a bulky note-book. Frank, passing by in painting-coat and sombrero, plucked the latter from his head and waved it in exaggerated salute, an action which evoked a responsive smile from the person for whom it was intended, but acted with quite a different effect on another person who chanced to witness it, and for whom it was certainly not intended. This was no other than Aunt Caroline Pratt, who, to Gertrude\'s dismay, came dashing past in an open carriage, a look of speechless horror on her handsome, horselike countenance.

[Pg 102]

Now it is impossible to be dignified on the top of an omnibus, and Gertrude received her aunt\'s frozen stare of non-recognition with a humiliating consciousness of the disadvantages of her own position.

With a sinking heart she crept down from her elevation, when the omnibus stopped at the corner, and walked in a crestfallen manner to Number 20B, before the door of which the carriage, emptied of its freight, was standing.

Aunt Caroline did not trouble them much in these days, and rather wondering what had brought her, Gertrude made her way to the sitting-room, where the visitor was already established.

"How do you do, Aunt Caroline?"

"How do you do, Gertrude? And where have you been this morning?"

"To the British Museum."

Gertrude felt all the old opposition rising within her, in the jarring presence; an opposition which she assured herself was unreasonable. What did it matter what Aunt Caroline said, at this time of day? It had been different when they had been little girls; different, too, in that first moment of sorrow and anxiety, when she[Pg 103] had laid her coarse touch on their quivering sensibilities.

Yet, when all was said, Mrs. Pratt\'s was not a presence to be in any way passed over.

"It is half-past one," said Aunt Caroline, consulting her watch; "are you not going to have your luncheon?"

"It is laid in the kitchen," explained Lucy; "but if you will stay we can have it in here."

"In the kitchen! Is it necessary to give up the habits of ladies because you are poor?"

"A kitchen without a cook," put in Phyllis, "is the most ladylike place in the world."

Mrs. Pratt vouchsafed no answer to this exclamation, but turned to Lucy.

"No luncheon, thank you. I may as well say at once that I have come here with a purpose; solely, in fact, from motives of duty. Gertrude, perhaps your conscience can tell you what brings me."

"Indeed, Aunt Caroline, I am at a loss——"

"I have come," continued Mrs. Pratt, "prepared to put up with anything you may say. Gertrude, it is to you I address[Pg 104] myself, although, from Fanny\'s age, she is the one to have prevented this scandal."

"I do not in the least understand you," said Gertrude, with self-restraint.

Mrs. Pratt elevated her gloved forefinger, with the air of a well-seasoned counsel.

"Is it, or is it not true, that you have scraped acquaintance with a young man who lodges opposite you; that he is in and out of your rooms at all hours; that you follow him about to his studio?"

"Yes," said Gertrude, slowly, flushing deeply, "if you choose to put it that way; it is true."

"That you go about to public places with him," continued Aunt Caroline; "that you have been seen, two of you and this person, in the upper boxes of a theatre?"

"Yes, it is true," answered Gertrude; and Lucy, mindful of a coming storm, would have taken up the word, but Gertrude interrupted her.

"Let me speak, Lucy; perhaps, after all, we do owe Aunt Caroline some explanation. Aunt, how shall I say it for you to understand? We have taken life up from a different standpoint, begun it on different bases. We are poor people, and we are [Pg 105]learning to find out the pleasures of the poor, to approach happiness from another side. We have none of the conventional social opportunities for instance, but are we therefore to sacrifice all social enjoyment? You say we \'follow Mr. Jermyn to his studio;\' we have our living to earn, no less than our lives to live, and in neither case can we afford to be the slaves of custom. Our friends must trust us or leave us; must rely on our self-respect and our judgment. Convention apart, are not judgment and self-respect what we most of us do rely on in our relations with people, under any circumstances whatever?"

It was only the fact that Aunt Caroline was speechless with rage that prevented her from breaking in at an earlier stage on poor Gertrude\'s heroics; but at this point she found her voice. Sitting very still, and looking hard at her niece with a remarkably unpleasant expression in her cold eye, she said in tones of concentrated fury:

"Fanny is a fool, and the others are children; but don\'t you, Gertrude, know what is meant by a lost reputation?"

This was too much for Gertrude; she sprang to her feet.

[Pg 106]

"Aunt Caroline," she cried, "you are right; Lucy and Phyllis are very young. It is not fit that they should hear such conversation. If you wish to continue it, I will ask them to go away."

A pause; the two combatants standing pale and breathless, facing one another. Then Lucy went over to her sister and took her hand; Fanny sobbed; Phyllis glanced from one to the other with her bright eyes.

Now, Gertrude\'s conduct had been distinctly injudicious; open defiance, no less than servile acquiescence, was understood and appreciated by Mrs. Pratt; but Gertrude, as Lucy, who secretly admired her sister\'s eloquence, at once perceived, had spoken a tongue not understanded of Aunt Caroline.

As soon, in these non-miraculous days, strike the rock for water, as appeal to Aunt Caroline\'s finer feelings or imaginative perceptions.

"If you will not listen to me," she said, suddenly assuming an air of weariness and physical delicacy, "it must be seen whether your uncle can influence you. I am not equal to prolonging the discussion."

[Pg 107]

Pointedly ignoring Gertrude, she shook hands with the other girls; angry as she was, their shabby clothes and shabby furniture smote her for the moment with compassion. Poverty seemed to her the greatest of human calamities; she pitied even more than she despised it.

To Lucy, indeed, who escorted her downstairs, she assumed quite a gay and benevolent manner; only pausing to ask on the threshold, with a good deal of fine, healthy curiosity underlying the elaborate archness of her tones:

"Now, how much money have you naughty girls been making lately?"

Lucy stoutly and laughingly evaded the question, and Aunt Caroline drove off smiling, refusing, like the stalwart warrior that she was, to acknowledge herself defeated. But it was many a long day before she attempted again to interfere in the affairs of the Lorimers.

Perhaps she would have been more ready to renew the attack, had she known how really distressed and disturbed Gertrude had been by her words.