Young as she was (seventeen or eighteen, or thereabouts), and also tender (like Little Billee), Trilby had singularly clear and quick perceptions in all matters that concerned her tastes, fancies, or affections, and thoroughly knew her own mind, and never lost much time in making it up.
On the occasion of her first visit to the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, it took her just five minutes to decide that it was quite the nicest, homeliest, genialest, jolliest studio in the whole quartier latin, or out of it, and its three inhabitants, individually and collectively, were more to her taste than anyone else she had ever met.
In the first place, they were English, and she loved to hear her mother-tongue and speak it. It awoke all manner of tender recollections, sweet reminiscences of her childhood, her parents, her old home—such a home as it was—or, rather, such homes; for there had been many flittings from one poor nest to another. The O’Ferralls had been as birds on the bough.
She had loved her parents very dearly; and, indeed, with all their faults, they had many endearing qualities—the qualities that so often go with those particular faults—charm, geniality, kindness, warmth of heart, the constant wish to please, the generosity that comes before justice, and lends its last sixpence and forgets to pay its debts!
She knew other English and American artists, and had sat to them frequently for the head and hands; but none of these, for general agreeableness of aspect or manner, could compare in her mind with the stalwart and magnificent Taffy, the jolly fat Laird of Cockpen, the refined, sympathetic, and elegant Little Billee; and she resolved that she would see as much of them as she could, that she would make herself at home in that particular studio, and necessary to its locataires; and, without being the least bit vain or self-conscious, she had no doubts whatever of her power to please—to make herself both useful and ornamental if it suited her purpose to do so.
Her first step in this direction was to borrow Père Martin’s basket and lantern and pick (he had more than one set of these trade properties) for the use of Taffy, whom she feared she might have offended by the freedom of her comments on his picture.
Then, as often as she felt it to be discreet, she sounded her war-cry at the studio door and went in and made kind inquiries, and, sitting cross-legged on the model-throne, ate her bread and cheese and smoked her cigarette and “passed the time of day,” as she chose to call it; telling them all such news of the quartier as had come within her own immediate ken. She was always full of little stories of other studios, which, to do her justice, were always good-natured, and probably true—quite so, as far as she was concerned; she was the most literal person alive; and she told all these ragots, cancans, et potins d’atelier in a quaint and amusing manner. The slightest look of gravity or boredom on one of those three faces, and she made herself scarce at once.
She soon found opportunities for usefulness also. If a costume were wanted, for instance, she knew where to borrow it, or hire it or buy it cheaper than anyone anywhere else. She procured stuffs for them at cost price, as it seemed, and made them into draperies and female garments of any kind that was wanted, and sat in them for the toreador’s sweetheart (she made the mantilla herself), for Taffy’s starving dressmaker about to throw herself into the Seine, for Little Billee’s studies of the beautiful French peasant girl in his picture, now so famous, called The Pitcher Goes to the Well.
Then she darned their socks and mended their clothes, and got all their washing done properly and cheaply at her friend Madame Boisse’s, in the Rue des Cloîtres Ste. Pétronille.
And then again, when they were hard up and wanted a good round sum of money for some little pleasure excursion, such as a trip to Fontainebleau or Barbizon for two or three days, it was she who took their watches and scarf-pins and things to the Mount of Piety in the Street of the Well of Love (where dwelt ma tante, which is French for “my uncle” in this connection), in order to raise the necessary funds.
She was, of course, most liberally paid for all these little services, rendered with such pleasure and goodwill—far too liberally, she thought. She would have been really happier doing them for love.
Thus in a very short time she became a persona gratissima—a sunny and ever welcome vision of health and grace and liveliness and unalterable good-humor, always ready to take any trouble to please her beloved “Angliches,” as they were called by Madame Vinard, the handsome shrill-voiced concierge, who was almost jealous; for she was devoted to the Angliches too—and so was Monsieur Vinard—and so were the little Vinards.
She knew when to talk and when to laugh and when to hold her tongue; and the sight of her sitting cross-legged on the model-throne darning the Laird’s socks or sewing buttons on his shirts or repairing the smoke-holes in his trousers was so pleasant that it was painted by all three. One of these sketches (in watercolor, by Little Billee) sold the other day at Christie’s for a sum so large that I hardly dare to mention it. It was done in an afternoon.
Sometimes on a rainy day, when it was decided they should dine at home, she would fetch the food and cook it, and lay the cloth, and even make the salad. She was a better saladist than Taffy, a better cook than the Laird, a better caterer than Little Billee. And she would be invited to take her share in the banquet. And on these occasions her tremulous
