This girl was lovely and was loved. Her lover was woefully poor, but that troubled Willow Pattern not at all. He had, she said, “a rich chin.” They married, and they are to this day as happy as happy can be. _Nota bene:_ They are still poor, the world says; for the world is so blind that it has never noticed that Willow Pattern’s husband has a rich chin.
They manage to eke out a living by picture-painting. If they would paint portraits they would be somewhat less poor, but they will not do that. A British matron tells how she once in this matter fared with Willow Pattern.
“I want you,” said the British matron, “to paint my portrait.”
Said Willow Pattern, “Sorry I can’t do that; but I will make a picture of you if you like; I shall put a swan in it, and call it ‘Woman and Swan.’ Do you mind?”
“Well, yes, rather,” admitted the British matron. “I wanted to be done as just me; but never mind, you shall have the job all the same.”
Said Willow Pattern (gasping), “I beg your pardon.”
Said the British matron, “Now get out your paints, child, and _do_ me.”
So far there has been nothing said of Lilla. Lilla, by the irony which often rules in names, is a sallow, shady-lipped girl. Her hair is dressed in one thin plait worn round the head, and I always see her as I last saw her—sitting before a cup of cold tea, with the milk like a mackerel sky on it. She was talking to another girl. I did not hear their talk, being myself in conversation with the fourth person present, but I noticed the singular beauty of Lilla’s voice, and here and there such fragments of quaint inversion as, “Hither came,” “I like it much,” “Think you?”
Next of kin, mentally, to the girl who goes in for art is the girl who goes in for art-criticism. This girl sits much with her hands folded and reads reviews not only of books, but of pictures and concerts. There is such a girl in London of to-day who never knows how much or how little she has enjoyed a concert until after perusal of the subsequent morning’s paper. This girl is aged sixteen.
[Illustration: Going in for Art criticism]
There is such another girl in London upon whom a perfect raid is made by persons humorous when the Academy exhibition of pictures opens. Most people, not professional artists, according to this girl, go about picture-exhibitions idiotically admiring everything. Nothing will induce her to believe that this spirit of admiration is perhaps not so much the result of idiotcy as it is the result of a clear consciousness on the parts of those feeling it that they lack all painting ability and so may fairly regard, with mingled wonder and delight, the work of persons who, to state the case for them at the lowest, do not lack all painting ability.