Thinking of all this he looked at Mrs. Barton’s girl, who was going to be quite good looking when she had filled out a bit, and tried to imagine her in Julian’s studio. It was not a success.
‘Will Julian paint you in London?’ he asked.
‘Oh no,’ said Alice, ‘he said he would do me in my studio.’
Mr. Johns, interested, inquired about the studio. Alice, thawing under his pleasant manner, told him all about how she had been delicate, and how she loved painting, and how her parents had let her turn the old nursery into a studio, and how she was trying to design a jacket for her mother’s next book. Having said this she felt she had gone too far and wished she were dead, but Mr. Johns showed such genuine sympathy that she became almost glad to be alive. Just as they were in the middle of this
