Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/46

36 chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed by such familiar references to them. "Well, he has told us about half we know," she used often to reply.

Among the things he told them was that this was the very best time in the young lady's life to have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it done well; also that he knew a "lovely artist," a young American of extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the work. He conducted them to this gentleman's studio, where they saw several pictures by which they were considerably mystified. Francie protested that she didn't want to be done that way, and Delia declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. Mr. Waterlow's productions struck them for the most part in the same manner as those garments which ladies classify as frights, and they went away with a very low opinion of the young American master. George Flack told them, however, that they couldn't get out of it, inasmuch as he had already written home to the Reverberator