Page:Nicholas Nickleby.djvu/121

Rh "They must be, I have no doubt," said Kate, humouring her good-natured little friend.

"They are beyond anything you can form the faintest conception of," replied Miss La Creevy. "What with bringing out eyes with all one's power, and keeping down noses with all one's force, and adding to heads, and taking away teeth altogether, you have no idea of the trouble one little miniature is."

"The remuneration can scarcely repay you," said Kate.

"Why, it does not, and that's the truth," answered Miss La Creevy; "and then people are so dissatisfied and unreasonable, that nine times out of ten there's no pleasure in painting them. Sometimes they say, 'Oh, how very serious you have made me look. Miss La Creevy!' and at others, 'La, Miss La Creevy, how very smirking!' when the very essence of a good portrait is, that it must be either serious or smirking, or it's no portrait at all."

"Indeed!" said Kate, laughing. "Certainly, my dear; because the sitters are always either the one or the other," replied Miss La Creevy. "Look at the Royal Academy. All those beautiful shiny portraits of gentlemen in black velvet waist-coats, with their fists doubled up on round tables or marble slabs, are serious, you know; and all the ladies who are playing with little parasols, or little dogs, or little children—it's the same rule in art, only varying the objects—are smirking. In fact," said Miss La Creevy, sinking her voice to a confidential whisper, "there are only two styles of porrait painting, the serious and the smirk; and we always use the serious for professional people (except actors sometimes), and the smirk for private ladies and gentlemen who don't care so much about looking clever."

Kate seemed highly amused by this information, and Miss La Creevy went on painting and talking with immovable complacency.

"What a number of officers you seem to paint!" said Kate, availing herself of a pause in the discourse, and glancing round the room.

"Number of what, child?" inquired Miss La Creevy, looking up from her work. "Character portraits, oh yes—they're not real military men, you know." "No!" "Bless your heart, of course not; only clerks and that, who hire a uniform coat to be painted in and send it here in a carpet bag. Some artists," said Miss La Creevy, "keep a red coat, and charge seven-and-sixpence extra for hire and carmine; but I don't do that myself, for I don't consider it legitimate."

Drawing herself up as though she plumed herself greatly upon not resorting to these lures to catch sitters, Miss La Creevy applied herself more intently to her task, only raising her head occasionally to look with unspeakable satisfaction at some touch she had just put in, and now and then giving Miss Nickleby to understand what particular feature she was at work upon at the moment; "not," she expressly observed, "that you should make it up for painting, my dear, but because it's our custom sometimes, to tell sitters what part we are upon, in order that if there's any particular expression they want introduced, they may throw it in at the time, you know."