antage
I was not to overlook. The girls were about fourteen or fifteen, and I
thought I could make rather a telling picture of the two heads together
in medallion shape. But the old lady was after me at once. She didn't
believe in pinching and cheeseparing, and didn't want the thing rounded
off in any of those circular frames. "No," she said. "_Allez-y
franchement_; you just draw them as they are, hands and feet and all,
_comme qui dirait_: there they are, those two girls, _les fillettes a la
mere Tusserand_."

To this I answered that we hadn't bargained for all that, and I was
right from a strictly professional point of view, but I wouldn't have
lost the five francs for the world, and I daresay she guessed as much,
and stuck to her guns. She, as an old materfamilias, knew that people
were not born in bust shape; then why should they be thus represented?
_She_ always gave good measure, and if she didn't, her customers would
soon keep her up to the mark; so why shouldn't she have her money's
worth? I felt that I ought to insist on better terms, if only for the
dignity of my profession, but I was no match for the old lady, so I
started work on her conditions, only, to save appearances, bargaining
for a plentiful supply of _reineclaudes_ during the sittings.

A sort of staircase, that had just missed being a ladder, led up in a
straight line to the room that was to serve as a studio. A bed of
imposing dimensions took up the greater part of the room; the bedstead
of polished mahogany was an old-fashioned structure, that you could see
at once had been handed down from one generation of fruiterers to
another; similarly suggestive was a queer old roccoco looking-glass, and
a faded portrait of a tomcat sitting on a middle-aged spinster's lap.
"Who are you, young man?" these worthy relics seemed to say; "have _you_
got a pedigree?"

The latest offshoots from the genealogical tree of the
Roufflard-Tusserand family had to be enthroned on the bed. I could
otherwise not get sufficiently far away from them to overlook my group.
It was desired that their arms should be interlaced with a view to
emphasising their sisterly affection, and this gave rise to a new
difficulty as to the presentment of one of the hands, which, being in
perspective, did not show the full complement of fingers. When Madame
Tusserand came to inspect my work, she particularly insisted that no
part of the thumb should be concealed. She had noticed such
imperfe