bt wrong, but nothing can possibly be right.
Let us eat and drink, for to-night we die. If you say so mamma shall go
and sit in the carriage, and as there's no means of fastening the doors
(is there?) your servant shall keep guard over her."

"Just as you are now--be so good as to remain so; sitting just that
way--leaning back with a smile in your eyes and one hand on the sofa
beside you and supporting you a little. I shall stick a flower into the
other hand--let it lie in your lap just as it is. Keep that thing on
your head--it's admirably uncovered: do you call such an unconsidered
trifle a bonnet?--and let your head fall back a little. There it
is--it's found. This time I shall really do something, and it will be as
different as you like from that other crazy job. Here we go!" It was in
these irrelevant but earnest words that Nick responded to his sitter's
uttered vagaries, of which her charming tone and countenance diminished
the superficial acerbity. He held up his hands a moment, to fix her in
her limits, and in a few minutes had a happy sense of having begun to
work.

"The smile in her eyes--don't forget the smile in her eyes!" Mrs. Rooth
softly chanted, turning away and creeping about the room. "That will
make it so different from the other picture and show the two sides of
her genius, the wonderful range between them. They'll be splendid mates,
and though I daresay I shall strike you as greedy you must let me hope
you'll send this one home too."

She explored the place discreetly and on tiptoe, talking twaddle as she
went and bending her head and her eyeglass over various objects with an
air of imperfect comprehension that didn't prevent Nick's private recall
of the story of her underhand, commercial habits told by Gabriel Nash at
the exhibition in Paris the first time her name had fallen on his ear. A
queer old woman from whom, if you approached her in the right way, you
could buy old pots--it was in this character that she had originally
been introduced to him. He had lost sight of it afterwards, but it
revived again as his observant eyes, at the same time that they followed
his active hand, became aware of her instinctive, appraising gestures.
There was a moment when he frankly laughed out--there was so little in
his poor studio to appraise. Mrs. Rooth's wandering eyeglass and vague,
polite, disappointed, bent back and head made a subject for a sketch on
the instant: they gave such a sudden pictorial glimp