on their part, for they noticed her no more than if she had been
the housemaid; not from intentional loftiness, but simply because
as yet, professionally, they didn't know how to fraternise, as I
could imagine they would have liked--or at least that the Major
would. They couldn't talk about the omnibus--they always walked;
and they didn't know what else to try--she wasn't interested in
good trains or cheap claret. Besides, they must have felt--in the
air--that she was amused at them, secretly derisive of their ever
knowing how. She wasn't a person to conceal the limits of her
faith if she had had a chance to show them. On the other hand Mrs.
Monarch didn't think her tidy; for why else did she take pains to
say to me--it was going out of the way, for Mrs. Monarch--that she
didn't like dirty women?

One day when my young lady happened to be present with my other
sitters--she even dropped in, when it was convenient, for a chat--I
asked her to be so good as to lend a hand in getting tea, a service
with which she was familiar and which was one of a class that,
living as I did in a small way, with slender domestic resources, I
often appealed to my models to render. They liked to lay hands on
my property, to break the sitting, and sometimes the china--it made
them feel Bohemian. The next time I saw Miss Churm after this
incident she surprised me greatly by making a scene about it--she
accused me of having wished to humiliate her. She hadn't resented
the outrage at the time, but had seemed obliging and amused,
enjoying the comedy of asking Mrs. Monarch, who sat vague and
silent, whether she would have cream and sugar, and putting an
exaggerated simper into the question. She had tried intonations--
as if she too wished to pass for the real thing--till I was afraid
my other visitors would take offence.