Mary had received twelve dollars for each of her verses--ninety-six dollars in all. Before Christmas Stefan sold his pastoral of the dancing faun for one hundred and twenty-five, and Mary felt that financially they were in smooth water, and ventured to discuss the possibility of larger quarters. For these they were both eager, having begun to feel the confinement of their single room; but Mary urged that they postpone moving until spring.
"We are warm and snug here for the winter, and by spring we shall have saved something substantial, and really be able to spread out," she argued.
"Very well, wise one, we will hold in our wings a little longer," he agreed, "but when we do fly, it must be high." His brush soared in illustration.
She had discussed with him the matter of the illustrations for her verses as soon as she received her cheque from Farraday. They had agreed that it would be a pity for him to take time for them from his masterpiece.
"Besides, sweetheart," he had said, "I honestly think Ledward will do them better. His stuff is very graceful, without being sentimental, and he understands children, which I'm afraid I don't." He shrugged regretfully. "Didn't you paint that adorable lost baby?" she reminded him. "I've always grieved that we had to sell it."
"I'll buy it back for you, or paint you another better one," he offered promptly.
So the verses went to Ledward, and the first three appeared in the Christmas number of The Child at Home, illustrated--as even Stefan had to admit--with great beauty.
Mary would have given infinitely much for his collaboration, but she had not urged it, feeling he was right in his refusal.
As Christmas approached they began to make acquaintances among the polyglot population of the neighborhood. Their old hotel, the culinary aristocrat of the district, possessed a cafe in which, with true French hospitality, patrons were permitted to occupy tables indefinitely on the strength of the slenderest orders. Here for the sake of the French atmosphere Stefan would have dined nightly had Mary's frugality permitted. As it was, they began to eat there two or three nights a week, and dropped in after dinner on many other nights. They would sit at a bare round table smoking their cigarettes, Mary with a cup of coffee, Stefan with the liqueur he could never induce her to share, and watching the groups that dotted the other tables. Or they would linger at the cheapest of their restaurants and listen to the conversation of the young people, aggressively revolutionary, who formed its clientele. These last were always noisy, and assumed as a pose manners even worse than those they naturally possessed. Every one talked to every one else, regardless of introductions, and Stefan had to summon his most crushing manner to prevent Mary from being monopolized by various very youthful and visionary men who openly admired her. He was inclined to abandon the place, but Mary was amused by it for a time, bohemianism being a completely unknown quantity to her.