Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/504

 mite gave me a most crushing reply. She made some allusion to her mother, and I said innocently, "I suppose your mother is a dresser?" She looked daggers at me, and said indignantly, "My mother's a lady wots in the ballet."

The wages of the children range from 6s. to 16s. a week, and, as their engagements often last for four months at a time, it will be seen that their money is a valuable, and in many instances. an essential, addition to the mother's purse.

Child models, being required almost exclusively in the daytime, are, thanks to the vigilance of the School Board authorities, becoming more and more scarce. The larger number of them comes from "model families," the mother having sat herself, and having from an early age accustomed her children to "sitting." The children of these families have no difficulty in obtaining regular work; they get a reputation in the painting world, and one artist recommends them to another. In the neighbourhood of Fitzroy-square, Holland-park, and St. John's Wood these families abound, and are mostly in very respectable circumstances. A pretty little girl, whose mother is a well-known model, and who has herself figured in several of Millais' pictures, told me with condescension that she had so many engagements she didn't know which artist to go to first.

Mary M, whose face is familiar to admirers of Miss Kate Greenaway's pictures, is, except for a couple of months in the summer, never out of work. She is a beautiful child of fourteen, the daughter of a cab-driver, who is not always in regular employment; and, as Mary has a tribe of little brothers, her earnings are of the utmost usefulness. For several months she has been sitting to three artists, and making the