“Don’t mention it,” she answered promptly. “I wasn’t surprised in the least; I have felt that way myself sometimes—just at first, you know.”

He stared rather. Not being acquainted with the quality and thickness of the lath and plaster of that locality, he did not connect her speech with the mild ejaculation that had apprised her of the fact that he had reached the top, and had mounted those stairs for the first time, and he rather inclined to the belief that he had chanced upon a lunatic.

“I was informed that Miss Erskine lives here,” he continued, glancing at the palette and mhalstick in her hand, which in her haste she had forgotten to put down. Instantly she perceived that he had not followed her train of thought, and regretted her former speech. Then she said “Oh!” because she did not know what else to say, and felt glad that she had a fire.

“Won’t you come inside?” she asked.

He took her for one of Miss Erskine’s pupils, and followed her in silence. She shut the door behind him, and then he saw that there was no one else in the room.

“The—the servant,”—he had narrowly escaped saying ‘slavey’—“told me to come straight up,” he went on explanatorily, “she said Miss Erskine was in. Can I see her if she is not engaged?”

Jill smiled a little bitterly. Engaged!

“I am Miss Erskine,” she answered with a touch of dignity that sat very quaintly on her, for she was small, and, in her black dress with the big white painting apron falling straight from the yoke like a child’s pinafore, looked ridiculously school-girlish and young; in addition to which she wore her hair in a plait, the end doubled underneath and tied with a black velvet bow. No wonder that he had taken her for a pupil.

The information seemed to surprise him, and he regarded her somewhat dubiously for a moment. Then he bowed.

“I am fortunate to find you disengaged,” he said.

“I should be fortunate if you had found me otherwise,” Jill answered ruefully, but he did not smile; probably he considered her flippant.

“I read your advertisement in the paper a short while since,” he continued gravely, “and came to—” he hesitated, and glanced round the room till his eye fell upon the canvas on which she was engaged, and the sight of it seemed to decide him, “to enquire your terms. 

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