"Oh, indeed no. You're very welcome. I hope that you'll stop and rest as long as you like;" and faintly blushing she shied away from the open purse and hurried out of the room.
"What on earth are we to do?" said one of the ladies.
"I saw a child in the passage," said the other lady. "Let us offer the child a present."
"Ah. That solves the difficulty. But how much? I suppose it must be half-a-crown."
"Nonsense!" said the other lady, tartly. "That is more than the price of the whole meal if she had let us pay for it. A present of a shilling at the outside. No, a shilling is absurd. Sixpence."
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes, sixpence wrapped up in a bit of paper."
"Then you must offer it."
And the other lady did. "Is that your little girl? Oh, what brown eyes--and mamma's pretty complexion. Good afternoon! We are so much obliged. And this is for you, dear--to buy sweeties."
Mavis was not disposed to allow her small princess to take a tip from a stranger's hand; but natural good-breeding forced her to acquiesce.
The ladies looked back at her, waved their hands by the garden gate, and went away talking.
"The child never said 'Thank you.' Badly reared."
"But the mother thanked you. I liked her face. She must have been distinctly good-looking."
The artists thought her distinctly good-looking even now, and perhaps, after being repulsed in their quest for bed and board, drifted off into an idle dream of how they might have met her a few years ago when they were less famous but more magnetically attractive. What a sitter she would have been for them, if she wouldn't be anything else! They admired the extreme delicacy of her nose that seemed so narrow in the well-rounded face, the loose brown hair that showed such a red flash in it beneath her sunbonnet, the perfect modeling of full forearms, firm neck, and ample bosom, the whole poise of her graciously solid figure, at once so reposeful and so free. But it was the eyes principally that set them dreaming of vanished youth, abandoned hopes, and lost opportunities. Nowadays Mavis could meet the unduly interested regard of male investigators with a candid unvacillating outlook; there came no hint of feebleness in resistance, too ready submission, or temperamental proneness to surrender; but her eyes, whether she wished it or not, still served as messengers between all that was feminine in her and all that was masculine outside her; and, with no reason not to tell the truth, they told it boldly, seeming to say, "Yes, once I had much to give, and I gave every single bit of it to one man. I have nothing left now for cadgers, sneak-thieves, and other outsiders."