"They pose. Miss Woodville must have noticed them in more than one of Sir Joshua's pictures. Oh, we all take our turns in sitting as models to him. Yesterday I was a shepherd; the day before, a sea-god." The good man drew himself up at the recollection of the lofty dignity with which his master's confidence had invested him. Thus chatting, they reached the first floor. Ralph introduced the ladies into a gallery filled with roughly sketched canvases. He knocked twice upon the door at the extreme end, but received no response. "How deaf the President grows!" he murmured, shaking his head. Without further delay he opened the door. Miss Woodville and her companion found themselves upon the threshold of quite a spacious chamber, lighted by a large window facing the north and nine feet in height. The room contained an easel upon which rested a white canvas; near the easel stood a large mirror; upon a table near by lay the palette, all ready and fresh, with a row of little paint jars. The model's chair, raised upon a dais and revolving upon a pivot, was placed next to that of the painter, and opposite the mirror. About the room several sofas were arranged. There were no knickknacks; no cluttering; nothing to offend the sight, unless it was that just about the painter's chair the floor was black with snuff. The man who advanced slowly to meet the strangers, making use of his maul-stick as a cane, while in the other he carried a silver ear-trumpet, was none other than Sir Joshua Reynolds himself, the greatest painter of women that the world has ever known. The first impression he made upon his visitors was disappointing, indefinable. That expansive brow which the hair, brushed straightly back, disclosed did not lack nobility; but the under lip, cleft by a wound and shrunken in the middle, lent to the mouth an expression at once unpleasant and strained. The eyes were concealed behind the crystalline glimmer of spectacles securely attached to the back of the head by broad black ribbons. The spare, calmly cold figure bore neither the trace of precise age nor the certainty of sex. At some distance and in obscurity one would have hesitated to pronounce it as that of a youth or an aged woman. Perhaps in some way the air of indecision and anxiety was due to that expression peculiar to those afflicted with deafness whose aim it is to dissimulate their infirmity. He cast upon the old Quakeress a rapid, searching glance; then his eyes rested complacently upon Miss Woodville; his features, cold to unpleasantness, softened and became animated. Already had he painted three thousand portraits, but, far from being weary of his profession, his enthusiasm for the wonders of the human physiognomy increased each time that he found himself in the presence of a new model. Each time he thought, "_This_ will be my _chef-d'oeuvre_!"