XXVI

I was so interested in listening to him and watching him work that I had forgotten what I had come to see him about.

I was so interested in listening to him and watching him work that I had forgotten what I had come to see him about.

I was so interested in listening to him and watching him work that I had forgotten what I had come to see him about.

Mr. Sands laughed.

“You would starve on that here even if you could make it, which I doubt. In Montreal you had your home and friends. It’s a different matter here altogether.”

I felt as I once did when, as a child, I climbed to the top of a cherry tree, and Charles had taken away the ladder, and I tried to climb down without it. I kept repeating desperately:

“I won’t go back! I tell you, I won’t! No, no, nothing will induce me to go back!”

I gathered up all my paintings. I felt distracted and friendless. Mr. Sands had returned to his painting and he seemed to have forgotten me. I saw the model watching me, and she leaned over and said something in a whisper to Mr. Sands. He put his palette down again and said:

“Come, Miss St. Denis. This will do for to-day. We all need a bit of refreshment. Miss Ascough looks tired.”

I was, and hungry, too. I had had no lunch, for I lost so much time looking for Mr. Sands’ studio.

He brought out a bottle wrapped in a napkin, and a big plate of cakes. He said:

“I want you to taste my own special brand of champagne cocktail.”

He talked a great deal then about brands of wines and mixtures, etc., while I munched on thecakes which I found difficulty in swallowing, because of the lump in my throat. But I was determined not to break down before them, and I even drank some of the cocktail he had mixed for me. Presently, I said:

“Well, I guess I’ll go,” and I gathered up my things. Mr. Sands stood up and put his hands on my shoulders. Miss St. Denis was standing at his elbow, and she watched me all the time he was speaking.

“Now, Miss Ascough, I am going to make a suggestion to you. I see you are determined not to go back. Now the only way I can think of your making a living is by posing.”

I drew back from him.

“I am an artist,” I said, “and the daughter of an artist.”

He patted me on the back.

“That’s all right. I know how you feel. I’ve been a Canadian myself; but there’s no use getting mad with me for merely trying to help you. You will starve here in Boston, and I’m simply pointing out to you a method of earning your living. There’s no disgrace connected with such work, if it is done in the proper spirit. As far as that goes, many of the art students are earning extra money to help pay their tuition that way. The models here get pretty good pay. Thirty-five cents an hour for costume posing and fiftycents for the nude. We here in Boston pay better than they do in New York, and we treat them better, too. Of course, there are not so many of us here and we haven’t as much work, but a model can make a fair living, isn’t that so, Miss St. Denis?”

She nodded slowly, her eyes still on me; but there was something warm and pitying in their dark depths.

“Now,” went on Mr. Sands, “I don’t doubt that you will get plenty of work. You are an exceedingly pretty girl. I don’t need to tell you that, for, of course, you know it. What’s more, I’ll safely bet that you have just the figure we find hard to get. A perfect nude is not so easy as people seem to think—one whose figure is still young. Most models don’t take care of themselves and it’s the hardest thing to find a model with firm breasts. They all sag, the result of wearing corsets. So we are forced to use one model for the figure, another for the legs, another for the bust—and so on, before we get a perfect figure, and when we get through, as you may guess, it’s a patchwork affair at best. Your figure, I can see, is young and—er—has life—esprit. Are you eighteen yet?”

“I’m nearly twenty-two.”

“You don’t look it. Um! The hands are all right—fine!—and the feet”—he smiled asI shrank under his gaze—“they seem very little. Small feet are not always shapely, but I dare say yours are. Your hair—and your coloring— Yes, I think you will do famously. It’s rather late in the season—but I dare say you’ll get something. Now, what do you say? Give over this notion of painting for a while, and perhaps I can get you some work right away.”

“I’ll never, never, never pose—nude,” I said.

“Hm! Well, well—of course, that’s what we need most. It’s easy to get costume models—many of our women friends even pose at that. However, now would you consider it veryinfra dig. then to pose for me, say to-morrow, in this Spanish scarf. You are just the type I need, and I believe I can help you with some of the other artists.”

I thought of the few dollars I had left. I had only about twelve dollars in all. Mr. Sands said he would pay me the regular rate, though I was not experienced. After a moment’s thought I said:

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Now, that’s talking sensibly,” he said, smiling, “and Miss St. Denis here will take you with her to other places to see about getting work.”

She said:

“Yes, certainement, I will do so. You come wiz me now.”

I thanked Mr. Sands, and he patted me on the shoulder and told me not to worry. He said he would give me some work regularly till about the middle of May when he went away for the summer. I would get thirty-five cents an hour, and pose two hours a day for him.

When we got to the street, the lights were all lit and the city looked very big to me. Miss St. Denis invited me to have dinner with her. She knew a place where they served a dinner for twenty-five cents. She seemed to think that quite cheap. I told her I couldn’t afford to pay that much every night and she said:

“Well you will do so by-and-by. Soon you will get ze work—especially eef you pose in ze nude.”

I said:

“I will never do that.”

She shrugged. After dinner she took me to a night school where she posed, as she said she wished me to see how it was done. Of course, I had already seen Lil Markey pose for the Count, but she was just an amateur model then. It did seem worse to me, moreover, to go out there before a whole class than before one man. Miss St. Denis seemed surprised when I said that, and she declared it was quite the other way.

That night I sat in my little narrow bedroom and looked out of the window, and I thought of all I had learned that day, and it seemed clearto me that Mr. Sands was right. There was little chance of my making a living as an artist in Boston. What was to become of me then? Should I return home? The thought of doing that made me clinch my hands passionately together and cry to myself:

“No, no; never, never!”

I remembered something Mr. Davis had said to me when he was teaching me to act. He said that I should forget my own personality and try to imagine myself the person I was playing. Why should I not do this as a model? I resolved to try it. It could not be so bad, since Mr. Sands had recommended it. Yes, I would do it! I would be a model! But I should not tell them at home. They would not understand, and I did not want to disgrace them.

With the resolve came first a sense of calmness, and then suddenly a rush of rage against Reggie who had driven me to this. I had the small town English girl’s foolish contempt for a work I really had no reason for despising. As the daughter of an artist, and, as I thought, an artist myself, it seemed to me, I was signing the death warrant of my best ambitions and, as I have said, I felt, with rage, that Reggie was to blame for this. I looked out of that window, and lifting up my eyes and clasped hands to the skies, I called:

“Oh, God in Heaven, hear me, and if I ever go back to Reggie, curse me, and may all kinds of ills come upon me. Amen.”

“Oh, God in Heaven, hear me, and if I ever go back to Reggie, curse me, and may all kinds of ills come upon me. Amen.”

“Oh, God in Heaven, hear me, and if I ever go back to Reggie, curse me, and may all kinds of ills come upon me. Amen.”

“O God in heaven! hear me, and if ever I go back to Reggie, curse me, and may all kinds of ills come upon me. Amen!”

Now, I thought, as I got into that folding bed, “I don’t dare to go back, for God will curse me if I do.”

MY trunk arrived next morning, and the driver charged me fifty cents to bring it from the station. I had always seen Reggie tip the drivers, so I offered him a nickel. The driver was a big, good-natured looking fellow, and he looked at the tip and then at the little room, and he said:

“I’ll not take the tip, kid, but I’ll be catching you around the corner some evening and take a kiss instead.”

He had such a merry twinkle in his eye and looked so kind that somehow I didn’t resent his familiarity. I even vengefully laughed to myself, to think how Reggie would have looked to hear that common man speak to me like that.

All of that day I went with Miss St. Denis to the studios and schools, waiting for her in some of them while she posed, and stopping only for a few minutes in others while she introduced me. I got several engagements and Miss St. Denis made me jot them down in a notebook she brought along. She said I must take everything offered to me, but that I must be careful not to get myhours mixed. I should even work at night, if necessary, for the season was almost over, and soon I would have difficulty in getting any engagements unless I was willing to pose nude at the summer schools. Nearly all the artists went away in summer—at least the ones who could afford to pay for models—and she predicted a hard time for me, unless I changed my mind about the nude posing.

I liked Miss St. Denis, and I respected her, too, even though she did seem to have no shame about stripping herself and going right out before whole classes of men.

Miss Darling had told me about a boarding place opposite her house, where I could get good board for three dollars a week. I crossed over that evening and entered one of those basement dining-rooms that lined almost the whole avenue. I had a newspaper with me, and while I waited for my dinner I went over the advertisements.

I was interrupted by a stir and movement in the room. A girl had come in with a little dog, and everybody was looking at the dog. She came over to my table and took the seat directly in front of me. I stared at her. I could not believe my eyes. There, sitting right at my table, was my little sister, Nora! I had thought she was in Jamaica.

We both jumped to our feet and screamed ournames, and then I began to cry, and Nora said hastily: “Sh! They are all looking at us!”

The dining-room was full of medical students and Harvard students. I had noticed them when I came in—one reason why I buried myself in the paper, because they all looked at me, and one, a boy named Jimmy Odell (I got to know Jimmy well later) tried to catch my eye, and when I did look at him once, he winked at me, which made me very angry, and I hadn’t looked up once again, till Nora came in.

You may be sure those students didn’t take their eyes off us all through that meal, and every one of them fed Nora’s dog. They had started to laugh and hurrah when Nora and I first grabbed at each other, but when I cried they all stopped and pretended to fuss with the dog.

I don’t know what I ate that day. Nora said I ate my meal mixed with salt tears, but she, too, was excited and we both talked together. Nora had changed. She seemed more sophisticated than when I saw her last, and she had her hair done up. She showed me this almost the first thing, and she said it made her look as old as I. She thought that fine. She assumed an older-sister way with me which was very funny, for I had always snubbed her at home as being a “kid” while I was a grown-up young lady.

When we went to her room, which, strange tosay, was in the same block as mine, two of the students followed us, one of them that Odell. We didn’t pay any attention to them, though Odell had the insolence to run up the steps when Nora was turning the key in the lock, and ask if he couldn’t do it for her. We both regarded him haughtily, which made him ashamed, I suppose, for he lifted his hat and ran down the stairs again.

Nora’s room was just about the same as mine, only she had a narrow cot instead of a folding bed, and she had a box for her foolish little dog. He was a white fox terrier and was not very good, for if she left him a single moment you could hear his cries all over the neighborhood. Consequently she was obliged to take him with her whenever she went out. I was awfully provoked next day, because I wanted her to go with me to the studios, but that miserable little dog made such a fuss that she turned back before we had reached the corner. She said she’d bring him along. I told her she was crazy. No girl could go looking for work with a dog along. She seemed to prefer the dog to me, which made me much huffed with her, for she went back to her room.

Nora was expecting money by telegraph from some doctor in Richmond, for whom she was going to work. She had been doing the same sort of work as Ada, writing for a newspaper, and shehad written “tons of poetry and stories and other things,” she said.

I wanted to talk over home things, and the work we were to do, etc., but Nora made me listen to all her stories. She would pile up the two pillows on her bed for a comfortable place for me, and then coax me to lie there while she read. She would say:

“Now, Marion, let me make you comfortable, and you rest yourself—you look awfully tired, and I’m sure you need a rest!—while I read you this.”

Then she would read one story after another, till I would get dead tired, but if I closed my eyes she would get offended; so I’d hold them open no matter how sleepy I got. Sometimes I couldn’t help laughing at the funny parts in her stories, which delighted her, and she would laugh more than I would, which would make her little dog yelp and jump about. Then when I cried in sad parts, she would get much excited, and say:

“Now I know it must be good. Some day huge audiences in big theatres all over the world will be crying just as you are now.”

Then her dog would jump up and lick her face, and I would say:

“Don’t you think that’s enough for to-night?”

Poor little Nora! She had hardly any money, but it didn’t seem to bother her a bit. ThoughI knew I would miss her, I advised her to take the steady position offered in Richmond, instead of starving here, and a few days later I saw her off for the South. She looked pathetic and awfully childish (in spite of her hair done up), and I felt more lonely than ever. I was crying when I got back to the lodging-house, and when I opened the door, Miss Darling was standing talking to some man in the hall. She called to me just as I was going up the stairs:

“Miss Ascough, here’s a nice young gentleman wants to meet you.”

I came back down the stairs, and there was that Harvard student, Odell. He had a wide smile on his face, and his hand held out. There was something so friendly and winning in that smile, and somehow the pressure of his big hand on mine felt so warm and comforting, and I was so lonely, that when he asked me to go out with him to dinner and after that to the theatre I said at once:

“Yes, I will.”

Thus began my acquaintance with a boy who devoted himself to me throughout his stay in Boston, and who, in his way, really loved me.

IHAD been posing for various artists for nearly two months, and I not only was used to the work but beginning to like it. How else, except as a model, could I have seen all I did at close range, and, in a way, assisted in the making of many great paintings by the best artists in Boston? Also I learned much from them, for nearly every artist I posed for talked to me as he worked. Some would tell me their hopes and fears and stories about other artists. I have even been the confidante of their love affairs.

One well-known painter proposed to a girl upon my advice. He told me all about his acquaintance with her, and of the opposition of her family as if he were telling a story, and then he asked:

“What would you do if you were the man in the case?”

I replied:

“I’d go right over and ask her to-night.” Whereupon he picked up his hat and said:

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll go this minute.”

One artist, famous for his paintings of sunlight, used to talk all the time he worked, and I realized that he was not talking to me but at me, for when I answered him he didn’t hear at all.

I didn’t make, of course, more than a living posing in costume, but for a time I got about four hours’ work a day. It was not always regular, and sometimes I didn’t even get that much time. Then there were days when I had no work at all, so I barely made enough to pay for my room and board. I realized that I would have to do something to increase my earnings, and I tried to get work to do at night schools. Miss St. Denis had told me there would be little chance there unless I would pose in the nude, and that I was determined not to do, but as the summer approached my work grew less and less, for the artists began to go away just as Miss St. Denis had told me they would.

Though Mr. Sands had said I was an exceedingly pretty girl, I found that beauty was by no means an exceptional possession, and especially among the models. There were much prettier girls than I, to say nothing of the many girl friends and relatives of the artists who were often willing to pose for them. So my good looks did not prove as profitable as I had hoped. Moreover, I was new at the work, had an acquaintanceto build up, and at first tired quicker than the older models.

However, I made a number of good friends among the artists. One of them, dear old Mr. Rintoul, who had a studio in that long row of studios near the art gallery. One day, I knocked at his door and applied for work as a model. He opened the door and peered out at me in the dark hall. At first he said he was sorry, but he couldn’t use me. He was a landscape-painter, and he said he guessed I had come to the wrong man, as there was another artist of his name on Tremont Street who painted figures. Then he said:

“But come in, come in!”

He was a little man of about fifty, and his face had the chubby look of a child. He wore the funniest old-fashioned clothes. He peered up at me through his glasses, and seemed to be examining my face. After a moment he said:

“Having a hard time, eh? Or are you extra busy now?”

I told him I was not extra busy, and he rubbed his chin in a funny way and said:

“I believe I can use you after all. Now I’ll tell you how we’ll arrange it. I’m a pretty busy man, so I can’t make any definite engagement, but you come here whenever you have nothing else to do, and I’ll use you if I can. If I’m toobusy, I’ll pay you just the same. How will that do?”

I thanked him, and told him I was so glad, for work was getting scarcer every day.

He pointed to a big armchair and said:

“Now sit down there and rest yourself. Be placid! Be placid!” He waved his hand at me, and went to see who was knocking at the door. Then he came back and said:

“Too busy to use you to-day. Here’s the money,” and he handed me seventy cents, as if for two hours’ work.

“Oh, Mr. Rintoul,” I said, “I haven’t worked at all.”

“Now don’t argue,” he said. “That was our agreement, so be placid!”

One day when I went to pose, he said that all the people in the studios were giving a tea, and they had asked him to open the doors of his studio, so the visitors could see it. He remarked that he would take that day off. I said:

“There must be an awful lot of artists here.”

He chuckled, and making his hand into a claw, said:

“Not all artists, but folks hanging on to the edge of art, and cackling,cackling! Now run along, and keep placid!” and he handed me a dollar for my “time.”

I never really posed for him at all, for he always had something else to do, but he would make me sit in the big armchair and “be placid.”

He is now gone to the land where all is placid, and whenever I hear that word I think of him, and my faith in good men is strengthened.

But not all of my experiences with the artists of Boston were as pleasant as that with Mr. Rintoul and Mr. Sands and some others. I had one terrible experience from which I barely escaped with my life.

I had posed several times for a Mr. Parker, who did a rushing business for strictly commercial firms. He made advertisements such as are seen on street-cars, packages of breakfast food and things like that. I had posed for him in a number of positions, to show off a certain brand of stockings as a girl playing golf, to advertise a sweater, and other things too numerous to mention.

He was a large, powerfully built man, devoted to sports, and he used to tell me about his place at Cape Cod, and how he fished and rode. He discovered that I could paint, and he let me help him sometimes with his work. We got to be very friendly, and I really enjoyed working for him and liked him very much. His wife was a sweet-faced gentle little woman who occasionally came to the studio, and she would sometimes putan extra piece of cake in his lunch box for me. He said she was a saint.

Of all the artists I worked for my best hopes rested on Mr. Parker, for he had promised, if certain work he expected came, he might be able to employ me permanently—not merely as a model, but assisting him.

One day after I had been working for him all morning, and we had lunch together, I sat down on a couch to glance over a book of reproductions, when I felt him come up beside me. He stood there, without saying anything for a while, and then, stooping down, brushed my cheek with his beard. I was not quite sure whether he was leaning over to look at the pictures, but I did not like his face so close, and half-teasingly I put up my hand and pushed his face away, as I might a fly that was in my way. Suddenly I felt a stinging slap on my face. Surprised and angry, I leaped to my feet.

“Mr. Parker, you are a little too rough!” I said. “That really hurt me.”

I thought he was joking, but when I saw his face I realized that I was looking at a madman.

“I intended to hurt you,” he said in the strangest voice, and then he cursed me and struck me again on the cheek with the flat of his powerful hand. “Take that, and that, and that!” His voicerose with each blow. Then he took me by the shoulders and shook me till my breath was gone.

“Now I’m going to kill you!” he raved.

I fell down on my knees, and screamed that I had not meant to offend him, but he caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the window, shouting that he was going to throw me out. We were seven stories up and he had dragged me literally on to the window sill. I tried to brace myself for death, as all my resistance seemed as nothing to his awful strength; but even while we struggled at the window, the door of his studio opened and some one came in. Like a flash he turned, and dragging me across the room, he literally threw me into the hall and shut the door in my face. To this day I do not even know who had entered his studio, but I believe it was a woman, and sometimes I wonder if it could have been his wife.

In the hall I gathered myself up. My clothes were nearly torn off my back, and I was black and blue all over. My hair was down, and blood was running down my chin. I climbed upstairs to the studio of another artist I had posed for, and when he opened the door to my knock, he was so startled by my appearance that he called to his wife, a sculptress, to come quickly.

He caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the window shouting that he was going to throw me out.

He caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the window shouting that he was going to throw me out.

He caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the window shouting that he was going to throw me out.

“What is the matter? Whatever is the matter?” she asked, drawing me in. “You poor girl, what has happened to you?”

I could not speak at first. I tried to, but my breath was coming in gasps, and I was sobbing. For the first time in my life hysterics seized me. They chafed my hands and brought me something to drink, and then she held my hands firmly in hers, and bade me tell her what had happened. Between sobs, I described the treatment I had received. I saw husband and wife exchange glances, and I ended:

“And now I’m going to have him arrested.”

“Listen to me,” said Mrs. Wilson. “I know you have suffered terribly, and that man ought to be killed; but take my advice, keep away from the police. Remember you have no witnesses. You could not prove the assault. It would be your word against his and you are only a model. Let it pass, and hereafter keep away from Mr. Parker.”

Her husband said:

“I’m surprised at Parker, the damned brute! I’ve heard of queer doings down there, and I knew he had beaten messenger boys, but, by Jove, I didn’t dream he’d beat a girl. You must have aroused his temper in some way. You know he’s unbalanced—of course you know that—every one does.”

No, I did not know that. He was worse than unbalanced, however. He was a madman.

I went home bruised and sore and, as they advised, let the matter drop. As Mrs. Wilson had said, I had no witnesses, and I was just a model!

IT was the second week in May, but as warm as summer and the flowers were all blooming in the parks. The artists were leaving Boston early that year. There seemed only a handful of them left in town. I had scarcely any engagements. Mr. Sands had left, and so had four other artists for whom I had been posing. Mr. Rintoul, too, had gone away. I could no longer go to Mr. Parker, the man who had beaten me.

I sat in my little hall room, reading a letter from home.

“Dear Marion: (wrote Ada.)We are all very glad to hear you are doing so well in Boston” (I had told them so) “and we hope you will come home this summer.Papa is not at all well and mama awfully worried. There is not much money coming in. I am doing all I can to help, and I gave up a good position offered me by the C. P. R. to travel over their Western lines and write travel pamphlets, because I will not leave mama just now.Charles would do more, but his wife won’t let him. I think you ought to help. Ellen has beensending money regularly, but now Wallace is ill. Even Nora sends something each week.I must say, Marion, that you always were the one to think only of yourself, and you always managed to have a good time. Now as you are earning money in the States, and there are so many younger ones at home, you certainly ought to send home some money. It is wicked of you not to.You will be sorry to hear that Daisy (the sister next to Nellie) went into the convent to be a nun last week. She simply was bent upon it and nothing we could say or do would stop her. You know she became a convert to the Catholic faith soon after Nellie married de Rochefort. She is with the Order of the Little Sisters of Jesus, and her name is now Sister Marie Anastasia. We all feel very badly about it, as she is so young to shut herself up for life.Last Sunday I went for a walk as far as the Convent of Les Petites Sœurs de Jesus, and I looked over the garden fence, but I could see no sign of our Daisy. So I called: ‘Daisy! Daisy!’ and oh, Marion, I felt awful to think of her behind those stone walls, just like a prisoner, and I even imagined I saw her face looking out of one of the windows of the solemn, ghostly-looking convent building. It is a very hard Order. We did everything to dissuade her, but one night she took the pilgrimage to Ste. Anne de Beaupré on a sort of prayer ship, and she never got off her knees all night long. Do you remember what beautiful hair Daisy had—the only one in our family with golden hair—well, it is all shaved off, mama says, though that was unnecessary till her final vows.So we’ve lost Daisy. It’s just as if she were dead.Have you broken off your engagement to that Reggie Bertie? You know I always said he was no good, and I never believed he really loved you. That kind of man only loves himself. Anyway there is no need to get married if you can earn your own living. I think most men are hateful.I met that Lil Markey on the street and she asked for your address. She said she was going to New York. She’s pretty common, and if I were you I’d not associate with her. You should have some pride.Write soon, and send some money when you do. Sooner the better. Love from all,Your aff. sister,Ada.”

“Dear Marion: (wrote Ada.)

We are all very glad to hear you are doing so well in Boston” (I had told them so) “and we hope you will come home this summer.

Papa is not at all well and mama awfully worried. There is not much money coming in. I am doing all I can to help, and I gave up a good position offered me by the C. P. R. to travel over their Western lines and write travel pamphlets, because I will not leave mama just now.

Charles would do more, but his wife won’t let him. I think you ought to help. Ellen has beensending money regularly, but now Wallace is ill. Even Nora sends something each week.

I must say, Marion, that you always were the one to think only of yourself, and you always managed to have a good time. Now as you are earning money in the States, and there are so many younger ones at home, you certainly ought to send home some money. It is wicked of you not to.

You will be sorry to hear that Daisy (the sister next to Nellie) went into the convent to be a nun last week. She simply was bent upon it and nothing we could say or do would stop her. You know she became a convert to the Catholic faith soon after Nellie married de Rochefort. She is with the Order of the Little Sisters of Jesus, and her name is now Sister Marie Anastasia. We all feel very badly about it, as she is so young to shut herself up for life.

Last Sunday I went for a walk as far as the Convent of Les Petites Sœurs de Jesus, and I looked over the garden fence, but I could see no sign of our Daisy. So I called: ‘Daisy! Daisy!’ and oh, Marion, I felt awful to think of her behind those stone walls, just like a prisoner, and I even imagined I saw her face looking out of one of the windows of the solemn, ghostly-looking convent building. It is a very hard Order. We did everything to dissuade her, but one night she took the pilgrimage to Ste. Anne de Beaupré on a sort of prayer ship, and she never got off her knees all night long. Do you remember what beautiful hair Daisy had—the only one in our family with golden hair—well, it is all shaved off, mama says, though that was unnecessary till her final vows.So we’ve lost Daisy. It’s just as if she were dead.

Have you broken off your engagement to that Reggie Bertie? You know I always said he was no good, and I never believed he really loved you. That kind of man only loves himself. Anyway there is no need to get married if you can earn your own living. I think most men are hateful.

I met that Lil Markey on the street and she asked for your address. She said she was going to New York. She’s pretty common, and if I were you I’d not associate with her. You should have some pride.

Write soon, and send some money when you do. Sooner the better. Love from all,

Your aff. sister,Ada.”

I looked at my money. I counted all that I possessed. I had just six dollars and twenty cents. I was badly in need of clothes, and I was only eating one meal a day. For breakfast and lunch I had simply crackers. Still, I felt that those at home probably needed money more than I did. So I wrote to Ada:

“Dear Ada:I was so sorry to hear papa is ill, and that you were all having a hard time; so I enclose $4, all I can spare just now. I am not making as much as I thought I was going to when I last wrote you; but I’ll soon be doing fine, so don’t worry about me, and tell papa and mama everything is all right.It’s awful about Daisy. She’s a poor little fool, and yet perhaps she is happier than any of us. Anyway I guess she feels peaceful. It must be sweet not to have to worry at all. Still I don’t believe in any stupid churches now.You don’t understand about Reggie. He was and is in love with me, so there, and he writes to me every day begging me to return. I guess I know my own affairs better than you do. I have no more news, so will say good-bye, and with love to all,Your aff. sister,Marion.”

“Dear Ada:

I was so sorry to hear papa is ill, and that you were all having a hard time; so I enclose $4, all I can spare just now. I am not making as much as I thought I was going to when I last wrote you; but I’ll soon be doing fine, so don’t worry about me, and tell papa and mama everything is all right.

It’s awful about Daisy. She’s a poor little fool, and yet perhaps she is happier than any of us. Anyway I guess she feels peaceful. It must be sweet not to have to worry at all. Still I don’t believe in any stupid churches now.

You don’t understand about Reggie. He was and is in love with me, so there, and he writes to me every day begging me to return. I guess I know my own affairs better than you do. I have no more news, so will say good-bye, and with love to all,

Your aff. sister,Marion.”

I posted my letter and then started out to keep an engagement to pose for an illustrator on Huntington Avenue. He had a charming studio apartment in a new building. I knew both Mr. Snow and his wife pretty well, for I had posed for most of his later work. They had only been married a little while. She was very pretty, and sweet, too. He was a tall, rather lanky man of about thirty, and his long teeth stuck out in front under his mustache. He made a great deal of money, as he said he had the knack of making pretty girls’ faces, and that was what the magazines wanted.

He told me one day that there was a time when he had not known where his next meal would come from. Then he had met his wife. He said: “Her family are the Reynolds of Cambridge,

He started to button my waist for me, but while he was doing it he kissed me on the back of my neck.

He started to button my waist for me, but while he was doing it he kissed me on the back of my neck.

He started to button my waist for me, but while he was doing it he kissed me on the back of my neck.

and they had the dough all right.” She had really started him on the way to success.

He was in a very genial mood that afternoon, and chatted away while he drew my head. He was making a cover for a popular magazine. I had removed my waist, and arranged some drapery about my shoulders to give the effect of an evening gown.

When he was through, and I was buttoning up my waist in the back, he came behind me and said:

“Allow me,” and started to button my waist for me, but while he was doing it, he kissed me on the back of my neck.

“I think—” I began, when a sweet voice called from the doorway:

“I have brought Miss Ascough and you some tea, dear.”

Mrs. Snow had entered the room, carrying a tray in her hand. She was a frail, pretty little thing, with beautiful reddish hair piled on top of her head. Mr. Snow went forward and took the tray from her hands, and, bending down, he kissed the hands holding it.

“Thank you, darling,” he murmured. “What an angel you are!”

She looked at him with such love and trust in her eyes that I decided no tale of mine should hurt her. I made up my mind, however, not topose for Mr. Snow again. So there was another of my artists gone! I left that house wondering if it were possible to believe in any man, and then I thought of Mr. Rintoul and I felt warmed and comforted.

IT was getting dark as I walked down Huntington Avenue and somebody was walking rapidly behind me, as if to catch up with me.

“Hallo, Marion!”

I turned, to see Jimmy Odell. He had been hanging around my lodging-house for days, and was always coaxing me to go to places with him and declaring that he was in love with me.

I liked Jimmy, though the people where I took my meals told me he was no good. They said his people had given him every advantage, but that Jimmy had played all his life and that his mother had spoiled him. However, I found him a most lovable boy, despite his slangy speech and pretended toughness of character. Jimmy liked to pretend that he was a pretty bold, bad man of the world. He was in his junior year at Harvard and about my own age.

Many a time when it seemed as if I could not stand my life, I was cheered by Jimmy with his happy, contagious laughter, and the little “treats” he would give me. Sometimes it was a ball game,sometimes a show and I had had many dinners and suppers with Jimmy. But Jimmy drank far too much. He didn’t get exactly drunk, but he carried a flask of whiskey with him, and he would say to whoever was about:

“Have a drink,” and if no one accepted he would say: “Well, here’s to you, anyway,” and drink himself.

It was no use my lecturing him about it, for he would just laugh at me and say:

“All right, grandma, I’ll be good,” and then go right ahead and do it again.

Once when he told me for the hundredth time that he loved me and begged:

“Come along. Let’s get married and fool ’em all.”

I said:

“If you do without whiskey for two weeks, and then come and tell me on your honor that you have not touched it, maybe I will.”

He said:

“That’s a go. I take you up!” and we shook hands solemnly on it; but the very next time he came to see me, I smelled the whiskey on him, and he said he hadn’t started the “two weeks’ water-wagon stunt” yet.

I was glad to see Jimmy’s happy face that evening, and, tucking my hand in his arm, we walked along the avenue.

“Gee!” said Jimmy, as we passed the hotels all lighted up and looking so inviting and fine, “I wish I had the cash to blow you to a wine supper, Marion, but, I seem to spend every d——cent before I get it.”

“Never mind, Jimmy,” I said. “I’ve my meal ticket for that boarding-house.”

“Oh, that hash-slinging joint!” groaned Jimmy. “Say, Marion, I know a dandy place on Boylston Street, corner of Tremont, where there is mighty good grub and beer, and they don’t soak a fellow fancy prices. Let’s go there now, what do you say?”

“All right, but I thought you said you were broke?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he replied airily. “Come along, and don’t ask questions.”

Somehow when I was with Jimmy, I never felt serious and I seemed to catch his happy-go-lucky spirit and say to myself: “Oh, well, I don’t care!”

Gaily we started for Jimmy’s restaurant. We had reached Elliott Street, when Jimmy said:

“Hold on a minute. You wait in this doorway for me a moment, Marion. I have to see a man on a matter of business.”

I stepped into the doorway, but I watched Jimmy. He swung into a shop over which there were hung three golden balls. Oh! I knew that place for I had already visited it. It shelteredmy engagement ring—the ring Reggie had given to me! In a few minutes out came Jimmy minus his spring overcoat. It is true the day had been warm, but the nights were still chilly, and I felt badly to see him without his coat.

“Jimmy, what have you done? Where’s your coat?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he laughed. “I just left it with my uncle over night. My mother won’t give me a red cent when I ask her—thinks I ought to eat at home or beat it for the country, now college’s closed—but she gives it to me all right—with tears, Marion—when she sees me next day without my coat. So come along.”

My feelings were mingled. If I did not go with him, I knew he would spend it all on drink. Besides, he had pawned his coat for me, and I felt it would be ungrateful to refuse to go with him now.

Jimmy ordered us a splendid supper, oysters, a big steak, beer; but it would have tasted better if I had not known about that overcoat, and I almost cried when we got out to the street, and he had to turn the collar of his coat up.

THE following night Jimmy turned up sure enough, not only with his overcoat, but, as he said, “the price of another bang-out.”

He said his mother had wept when she saw him “shivering,” and “you better believe no one ever shivered better than I did,” said Jimmy.

So I went to supper again with Jimmy. When we were sitting at the table, and he started to order beer for me, I said:

“Now, look here, Jimmy, I’ll eat supper with you, but I won’t drink with you, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Be a sport, Marion.”

“I don’t pretend to be a sport,” I replied, “and anyway in Montreal that means to shoot or skate or snowshoe or toboggan. Here when you say ‘sport’ you mean to drink a lot of liquor. I think it’s horrid.”

Jimmy regarded me reproachfully.

“I bet those farmers in Montreal drink their share all right,” he said. “Of course, that bum Canadian village isn’t really on the map at all” (he was teasing me), “but I’ll bet the booze is right there. Say, don’t you really have cars running there? I bet you had some fine Jay-farmer beaus all right—oh! How about the one whose letters you’re always so glad to get? You nearly fell down the stairs the other day in your hurry to get that one from Miss Darling.”

I couldn’t help laughing to think of Reggie being called a farmer. Jimmy took offense at my laughing.

“Say, what’re you laughing about anyhow? If you don’t want my company, say so, and I’ll take myself off.”

“Don’t be silly, Jimmy. You know very well I like your company, or I wouldn’t be sitting with you now.”

“Then why can’t you drink a glass of beer with a fellow? I bet you would if I were that Montreal chap.”

“I’ll drink the beer on one condition,” I said. “If you’ll promise not to drink any whiskey to-night.”

Jimmy leaned over the table.

“I’ll promise you anything on earth, Marion. I’m half-crazy about you anyhow.”

The waiter was passing, and looking at us, he said:

“No kissing allowed.”

Jimmy was on his feet.

“What the devil do you mean? Did you mean to insult this lady?”

His voice was raised and he had seized that waiter by the collar. I felt ashamed and afraid. I jumped up and tried to pull Jimmy from the waiter, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Please, Jimmy, for my sake, stop!” I pleaded. The waiter was smiling a forced sort of smile, and he said:

“No insult was intended, sir.”

“All right then, apologize to this lady.”

The waiter did so.

“And now,” said Jimmy in a very lordly way, “come along, Marion, we don’t have to stay in this place. Come along.”

When we got out to the street I turned upon him and said:

“You can take me home, Jimmy Odell. I won’t go into another restaurant with you. I’m not going to be disgraced again.”

“Oh, all right-oh!” said he sulkily. “I guess I can get all the whiskey I want alone without any one preaching to me,” and he turned around as if to leave me. I ran after him and caught him by the arm.

“Jimmy, don’t drink any more.”

He tried to shake off my hand, and he said recklessly:

“What difference does it make? You don’t care anything about me. You wouldn’t really care if I drank myself to death.”

“I would care, Jimmy. I care an awful lot about you.”

Jimmy stopped short in the street.

“Do you mean that? You do care for me?” I nodded. “Very well, then,” said he, “it’s up to you to stop me. If you’ll marry me, I’ll quit the booze. That’s on the level, Marion.”

“Now, Jimmy, you know what I told you before, and yet you couldn’t keep away from that old flask of whiskey. You love it better than me. And I’m not going to marry you till Idosee some real signs in you of reforming. Besides, anyway, you’ve got two years still to finish at Harvard, and I guess your people would be crazy if you got married before you graduated.”

“Say, who is marrying, they or me?” demanded Jimmy. “Ah, come along, like a good fellow. Here’s just the joint we want,” and he drew me into a chop house on Washington Street.

No sooner was he seated at the table than he ordered two steins of beer for us, but he kept his word about the whiskey. I had difficulty in drinking from the stein, as the lid knocked my hat crooked, and this amused Jimmy vastly. He began to chuckle loudly all of a sudden, and he leaned over the table and said:

“Tell you what I’ll do, Marion. My sister’s giving some sort of party to-morrow night. How’d you like to go along?”

“Why, how can I? She hasn’t invited me.”

“Well, I guess I can bringmyfriends to our house if I want,” declared Jimmy, as though some one had questioned his right. “Will you or won’t you go? Yes or no?”

“We-el—”

“No ‘well’ about it. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

IDIDN’T have any work at all to do the next day, so I stayed in and fixed up a pretty dress to wear to the party at Jimmy’s house. He called early for me, bringing along another student named Evans, who played the guitar. We stopped for Benevenuto, an Italian, who played the mandolin with Evans, and whom I had met several times.

At the last moment, I hesitated about going and I said:

“Maybe your mother and sister won’t want me. If they knew I was a model, I’m sure they wouldn’t.”

“Great Scott!” burst from Jimmy, “that just proves how beautiful you are, Marion. If I were a girl, I’d be proud to say the artists wanted me for all those fine paintings. I’ve not seen a magazine cover to compare with your face, Marion, and, say—my folks ought to be proud to know you, eh, Evans?”

Evans grinned, and Benevenuto nodded violently. It was nice to have Jimmy think so wellof my “profession,” and I didn’t tell him that all models were not necessarily beautiful. Some of them are very ugly but “paintable.”

As we were going along in the car, Jimmy said to Evans:

“Say, Bill, you want to get next to my sister’s friend, Miss Underwood. She’s a fine girl, and has heaps of dough. My sister wants her for a sister-in-law, but little Jimmy has his own ideas.” Turning to me, he added with a tender smile: “She can’t begin to hold a candle to you, Marion.”

Jimmy’s people lived in a very fine house, and I felt much impressed and somewhat anxious as we passed in. His sister looked like Jimmy and had his features, but where the tall, swinging figure and handsome features made a fine-looking man, the same type in a woman did not make a beauty. She looked hard and bony. Her manner to me was of the most frigid, and I saw her give Jimmy an angry glance, as he airily presented me. She kept him on one excuse or another right by her side and that of a very tall girl all evening. Benevenuto and Evans were soon playing for the company, and I, who had not been introduced to many of the people, found a quiet corner of the room, where I could sit unobserved and watch every one.

I had been there some time, and Benny andEvans had given way to a girl who was singing in a high voice “The Rosary,” when I heard Benevenuto’s voice speaking softly in my ear:

“Miss Marion, will you me permit to call upon you?”

He was small and dark, and his hands were soft and brown. He had shining black eyes and hair that curled. He could play beautifully, the reason why the students at the boarding-house chummed with him; and then Evans was a great favorite with them all, and the two were indispensable to each other. They got engagements to play together in concerts and musicales. Evans was working his way through college in this way. Many people looked upon Benevenuto as a musical prodigy. He could play almost any musical instrument. His father was a barber, his brother a cook; but all of his humble relatives were contributing to the musical education of this talented member of their family.

I had never given Benny much thought or attention, except when he played in the room below me, where Evans roomed. I would open my door and listen to the strains of music, and sometimes Evans would call up to me to come down. One day I had been listening to them play, and when they got through joked with Benny about something. He came over and sat down beside me on the couch, and he said:

“I like-a you, Miss Marion. You look like my countrywomen.”

Miss Darling had said to me that night:

“Be careful how you flirt with an Italian. They are pretty dangerous fire to play with.”

So when that night of the party, Benevenuto asked me if he might call, I thought of that, and I said:

“Oh, I’ll see you when you are playing in Mr. Evans’ room some night.”

“No,” he persisted. “I like-a make special call on you. Please to permit.”

To humor him, I said:

“Oh, all right, and bring your mandolin.”

He smiled at me ecstatically and said fervently:

“Me—I am coming right away to-morrow night.”

It was time to go. Most of the guests were going into the bedroom for their wraps. Nobody noticed me. So I slipped into the room where Jimmy had taken me upon my arrival there. It was his mother’s, he had said, but she was away at their country place. I noticed on the bed a black straw hat with a steel buckle holding the severe bit of plumage, and I thought to myself that it was probably his mother’s hat, for no one else had put their wraps in this room. I was putting on my own hat at the mirror when I heard some one say:

“Sh-h!”

I turned around, and there was Jimmy in the doorway. He was whispering with his hand to his mouth.

“Marion, say good-night to my sister quickly, and then sneak away. I’ll be waiting on the porch.”

So I found my way back to where his sister and a number of guests were, and I wished them good-night and thanked Miss Odell for the lovely time I had not had.

“Good-night,” she returned coldly, “your friend, Mr. Benevenuto, will see you home.” Then she turned to the girl at her side: “Jimmy will be delighted to take you home, dear. He is still in the supper-room.”

I felt like saying:

“He is waiting for me!”

As we walked home, Jimmy said:

“I couldn’t get away from sis. Gad! that friend of hers may be handsome, but I hate handsome horses. I like a little pony like you, Marion.”

“Don’t you think I’m handsome then?” I asked mischievously.

“Not by a long shot. You are the most kissable—little—”

“Jimmy, behave yourself. Look at that policeman watching us, and don’t forget that waiter.”

“Oh, hang policemen and waiters,” growled Jimmy. “What the devil dotheyknow about kisses?”

“When you want to kiss me, Jimmy Odell,” I said, “you’ll have to come without that whiskey odor on your breath.”

“Oh, all right-oh!” said Jimmy. “I guess there are others won’t mind it.”

“No, I guess not,” I sniffed. “Horses haven’t much smelling sense.”

THERE was a rap on my door. I opened it, and there was Benevenuto. He had on a black suit. It looked like the suits the poor French Canadians dress their dead in. He had plastered his hair so sleekly that it shone like a piece of black satin, and oh! he did smell of barber’s soap and perfume. His big black eyes were shining and he was smiling all over his face.

“Where is your mandolin?” I asked.

“I have called to seeyou,” he answered. “Me, I am not musician to-night.” Then as he saw my evident disappointment, he said, “but if I am not welcome for myself, I can go.”

I felt really sorry for him, as his smiling face had become so suddenly mournful and stormy-looking. So I said:

“Oh, I’m really glad to see you,” and I tried to smile as if I were. He came up to me with a kind of rush and said excitedly:

“Marion, I love-a you! I love-a you! I love-a you! Give me the smile again. That smile is like music to me. I love-a you!”

I was amazed and also alarmed.

“Mr. Benevenuto,” I said, backing away from him, “please go away.”

I thought of what Miss Darling had said, that Italian men were not to be played with. I had merely smiled at Benny, with what a volcanic result! He was coming nearer and nearer to me, and he kept talking all the time, in his soft, pleading way:

“Marion, I have love-a you from the first day I have look at you. You look-a like my countrywomen, Marion. We will getta married. Soon I will make plenty money. We will have maybe little house and little bebby.”

I could stand it no longer. He was only a boy after all, and somehow he made me think of the little beggar boy I had pinched when I gave him the bread and sugar. I pushed him away from me, and I said:

“Don’t talk such foolishness. I am old enough to be your mother.” I think I was about three years older than he.

“No matter, Marion,” he said, “no matter. I do not care if you are so old. I love-a you just same.”

I was sidling round along the wall, and now I had reached the door. I ran down the stairs, and I did not stop till I reached the safety of Miss Darling’s room.

“What on earth is the matter?” she cried, as I burst in.

Between laughter and tears I repeated the interview. She couldn’t help laughing at me, especially when I told about the part of “the little bebby.” Then she said:

“Well, we’ll get him out now, but you must never, never flirt with an Italian. You’re apt to be killed if you do.”

Later in the evening Jimmy came. He was very quiet and queer for Jimmy, and he sat down on my window sill, and held his head in his hands. When I told him about Benevenuto, he looked up and said:

“The damn’ little rat. I’ll throw him out of the window.”

After a moment he said:

“Come over here, Marion, I want to tell you something.”

I sat down on the opposite side of the window seat.

“Say, Marion, there’s a hell of a row going on up at my house about you. Sis kicked up an awful fuss, and they’re all on to my coming to see you. Sis declared I insulted her friend, because I took you home instead, and mother is mad, too. They make me sick. Mother asked me where your folks lived, and what you were living alone like this for, and they insinuated

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