inexplicable talent for imitation. Her usual appearance was like a
curtain which--she could draw up at request for a capital
performance. This performance was simply suggestive; but it was a
word to the wise--it was vivid and pretty. Sometimes even I
thought it, though she was plain herself, too insipidly pretty; I
made it a reproach to her that the figures drawn from her were
monotonously (betement, as we used to say) graceful. Nothing made
her more angry: it was so much her pride to feel she could sit for
characters that had nothing in common with each other. She would
accuse me at such moments of taking away her "reputytion."

It suffered a certain shrinkage, this queer quantity, from the
repeated visits of my new friends. Miss Churm was greatly in
demand, never in want of employment, so I had no scruple in putting
her off occasionally, to try them more at my ease. It was
certainly amusing at first to do the real thing--it was amusing to
do Major Monarch's trousers. They WERE the real thing, even if he
did come out colossal. It was amusing to do his wife's back hair--
it was so mathematically neat--and the particular "smart" tension
of her tight stays. She lent herself especially to positions in
which the face was somewhat averted or blurred, she abounded in
ladylike back views and profils perdus. When she stood erect she
took naturally one of the attitudes in which court-painters
represent queens and princesses; so that I found myself wondering
whether, to draw out this accomplishment, I couldn't get the editor
of the Cheapside to publish a really royal romance, "A Tale of
Buckingham Palace." Sometimes however the real thing and the make-
believe came into contact; by which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping
an appointment or coming to make one on days when I had much work
in hand, encountered her invidious rivals. The encounter was not