"You are spending your capital," said Fräulein Vogel.
"If I spent only my income I should either wear shoes and no clothes, or clothes and no shoes," answered Kitty, laughing, with a little air of recklessness that sat well on her. "Besides," she added sagely, "it is well to burn one's ships. Sink or swim."
"But you are quite sure of swimming?" said Fräulein Vogel, taking up the picture again and looking at it closely.
"Abominable," said the painter. She drew a long breath and shook her head. "Abominable," she repeated, almost as though such an abominable piece of work demanded respect. "_Ach_! You leave old Zweifarbe's studio," she exclaimed. "Send your easel over to me. You want to make some money? Good. There are many artists here in Dåsseldorf who say I cannot paint; there is not one who will say I have not made money. Perhaps I can teach you." And Fräulein Vogel burst out laughing, while Kitty stared at her in blank surprise.
"But you have never taken pupils," she stammered.
"I have never died; but I suppose I shall," was the response.
And so old Zweifarbe lost a pupil,--for Kitty's easel was straightway borne on the back of a sturdy _dienstmann_ to Fräulein Vogel's studio. What a chatter, what a commotion, it caused in the nest of painters! They chirped and gossiped and pecked each other like a flock of sparrows. The Frau Pastorin expressed the popular sentiment when she discussed Hedwig Vogel's eccentricities.
"How much a lesson?" she said, half closing one shrewd gray eye. "How much a lesson? Ah, she would not take pupils,--no, no, not while she was Hedwig Vogel; and _der liebe Gott_ knows she will never be Hedwig anything else. But she will make an exception for our deer Mees Varing; oh, yes, an exception! Wait till Mees Varing's rich American friends come along and buy some of the great Vogel's pictures. You will see."
"But has the Mees any rich friends?" asked her crony the Frau Doctorin.
And then the parson's widow laughed in a worldly way.
"So pretty a girl," she said, "so fine a complexion, such little feet! And those winning ways!"
From which it will be seen that the Frau Pastorin could admire and appreciate a woman who was young and beautiful. So could the painters; but that is easier to believe. And so could the tight-booted lieutenants; but that is perfectly understood. When Kitty Waring crossed the Hof Garten, even that old woman who years and years ago sold little Heinrich Heine plums would point out the girl to her contemporary the venerable under-gardener.