is nose having sniffed at every threshold they passed and into every
crack and corner of the three flights of stairs.

Felix's own nostrils were now dilating with pleasure. The odor of
varnish and turpentine had brought back some old memories--as perfumes
do for us all. A crumpled glove, a bunch of withered roses, the salt
breath of an outlying marsh, are often but so many fairy wands reviving
comedies and tragedies on which the curtains of forgetfulness have been
rung down these many years.

Something in the aroma of the place was recalling kindred spirits across
the sea, when the door was swung wide and Ganger in a big, hearty voice,
cried:

"Mr. O'Day, is it? Oh, I am glad! And that dear child, and--Hello! who
invited you, you restless little devil of a dog? Come in, all of you!
I've a model, but she doesn't care and neither do I. And this, Mr.
O'Day, is my old friend, Sam Dogger--and he's no relation of yours,
you imp!"--with a bob of his grizzled head at Fudge--"He's a
landscape-painter and a good one--one of those Hudson River fellows--and
would be a fine one if he would stick to it. Give me that hat and coat,
my chick-a-biddy, and I'll hang them up. And now here's a chair for you,
Mr. O'Day, and please get into it--and there's a jar full of tobacco,
and if you haven't got a pipe of your own you'll find a whole lot of
corncobs on the mantelpiece and you can help yourself."

O'Day had stood smiling at the painter, Masie's hand fast in his, Fudge
tiptoeing softly about, divided between a sense of the strangeness of
the place and a certainty of mice behind the canvases. Felix knew the
old fellow's kind, and recognized the note of attempted gayety in the
voice--the bravado of the poor putting their best, sometimes their only,
foot foremost.

"No, I won't sit down--not yet," he answered pleasantly; "I will look
around, if you will let me, and I will try one of your pipes before I
begin. What a jolly place you have here! Don't move"--this to the model,
a slip of a girl, her eyes muffled in a lace veil, one of Ganger's
Oriental costumes about her shoulders--"I am quite at home, my dear, and
if you have been a model any length of time you will know exactly what
that means."

"Oh, she's my Fatima," exclaimed Ganger. "Her real name is Jane Hoggson,
and her mother does my washing, but I call her Fatima for short. She can
stop work for the day. Get down off the platform, Jane Hoggson, and talk
to this dear little girl.