pidation
what might be our charge for a portrait of her little girl. Dupont was
at once fully up to the situation, and said--

"Ah, madame, it is not quite easy to give you a direct answer. Charges,
you see, vary a good deal according to the style. There is the
guaranteed likeness at one price, and there is the family likeness at
another, considerably lower to be sure; that again fluctuating according
to the amount of chiaroscuro the client desires introduced. What shall
we say, my friend?" he asked, turning to me. I started a consultation on
the subject in gibberish, to which he readily responded in the same
tongue. She was much impressed by our mastery over the strange idiom,
and exclaimed admiringly--

"Ah, messieurs, anybody could see you were English."

Returning to business, Dupont further explained--

"It is, above all, the colouring, madame, that makes the difference in
price. We can do you a drawing--of the first-class quality to be
sure--for two francs twenty-five centimes; coloured, madame, it cannot
be produced for less than three francs seventy-five centimes."

It was her turn to consider and mentally to review the means at her
disposal for art purposes.

"Well, messieurs," she finally decided, "will you please do the drawing
part, and"--pointing to the pots and pans on the shelf--"my husband will
lay on the colours."

The little girl was pretty, and we had got our full enjoyment out of the
joke, so we set to, Dupont drawing her, and I doing the painting, and
finally we presented our joint work as a free gift to Madame Leroux. She
was deeply grateful, but looked just a trifle alarmed. Were we princes
in disguise, she was wondering, or had she been harbouring peripatetic
angels unawares? But she only pressed our hands and said--

"Believe me, Messieurs, I felt it, I knew it from the first, that you
were English."

I only hope that Monsieur Leroux, when he came home, was pleased with
our performance, and satisfied in his mind that I had given the full
amount of colour necessary to constitute a complete work of art.

Leaving the city, we shortly had an opportunity of testing our abilities
by the attractions they might possess for the rustic population of
France. It was in a charming little place, somewhere not far from Blois,
an idyllic spot and a very haven of rest, I should think, in times of
peace; but just now it was invaded by a large contingent of visitors,
attracted by the holding of the ann