“God bless my soul,” cried Jimmie, putting down his pipe, “I never thought of it. Tony, my boy, that child with the innocence of the dove combines the wisdom of the original serpent. My brain reels to think what I should be without her. We'll telegraph to all the people that have sat to me and ask them to send in their portraits by Thursday.” He crossed the studio and began to rummage among the litter on the long table. Aline asked him what he was looking for. “Telegram forms. Why have n't we got any? Tony, run round the corner to the post-office, like a good boy, and get some.” But Aline checked the execution of this maniacal project. Three portraits would be quite sufficient. Jimmie would have to pick out three ladies of whom he could best ask such a favour, and write them polite little notes and offer to send a van in the orthodox way to collect the pictures. Jimmie bowed before such sagacity, and wrote the letters. In the course of the week the portraits arrived, and the studio for a whole day became the undisputed kingdom of Aline and a charwoman. The long untidy table, so dear to Jimmie, was ruthlessly cleared and set in dismaying order. The frame-maker was summoned, and the unsold pictures that had long slumbered sadly on the ground with their faces to the wall, were dusted and hung in advantageous lights. The square of Persian carpet, which Jimmie during an unprotected walk through Regent Street had once bought for Aline's bedroom, was brought down and spread on the bare boards of the model-platform. A few cushions were scattered about the rusty drawing-room suite, and various odds and ends of artists' properties, bits of drapery, screens, old weapons, were brought to light and used for purposes of decoration. So that when Jimmie, who had been banished the house for the day, returned in the evening, he found a flushed and exhausted damsel awaiting him in a transfigured studio. “My dear little girl,” he said, touched, “my dear little girl, it's beautiful, it's magical. But you have tired yourself to death. Why did n't you let me do all this?” “You would never have done it yourself, Jimmie. You know you wouldn't,” said Aline. “You would have gone on talking nonsense about red baize strips and flower-girls and pages--anything to make those about you laugh and be happy--and you would never have thought of showing off what you have to its full advantage.” “I should never have dreamed of robbing your poor little room of its carpet, dear,” he said. They went upstairs for their simple evening meal, and returned as usual to the beloved studio. Aline filled Jimmie's pipe. “Do you think I dare smoke in all this magnificence?” She laughed and struck a match. “You did not realise what a lot of beautiful pictures you had, did you?”