The absurd vanity and audacity of the thought made me blush like a bashful schoolgirl. The ridiculous pretentiousness of the thought that in me, the 'inmate' of St. Peter's, this splendid person could find a companion, impressed me now so painfully that I felt it must be plainly visible; that the visitor must see and be scornfully amused by it. Yet, with really extraordinary cordiality, he was holding out his right hand in salutation. Here again my awkwardness made me bungle. What he meant by his gesture I could not think. Some amusing trick, perhaps. It did not occur to me in that moment of self-abasement that he wished to shake an 'inmate's' hand. 'Won't you shake?' he asked, with that smile of his--so unlike any expression one saw on folks' faces at St. Peter's. 'I beg your pardon,' I faltered, and gave him a limp hand, reviling myself inwardly for conduct which I felt would utterly and for ever condemn me in this gentleman's eyes. 'Of course,' I told myself, 'he'll be thinking: "What can one expect from these unfortunate inmates--friendless orphans, living on charity?"' As a fact, I suppose no man's demeanour could have been less suggestive of any such uncharitable thought. 'I suspect you thought it like my cheek, yelling at you like that. The fact is, I had just begun to sketch you. See!' He showed me his sketch-block, upon which I saw in outline the figure of a boy carrying pails and leaning over a fence. What chiefly caught my eye in this was the reproduction of my absurd trousers, one torn leg reaching midway down the calf, the other in jagged scallops about my knee. He might have idealised my rags a little, I thought, in my ignorance. No doubt I had been better pleased if Mr. Rawlence had endowed me in the sketch with the dress of, say, a smart clerk. And, apart from the artistic aspect, the man who would sniff at this as evidence of contemptible snobbishness in me, would take a more lenient view, perhaps, if he had ever spent a year or two in an orphanage like St. Peter's. 'It has the makings of quite a good little character study, I fancy. Later on, when you're free--perhaps, to-morrow--I'll get you to give me half an hour, if you will, to make a real sketch of it.'