"Slang is an execrable thing from a professed scholar," she reproved.
"However, the big idea is that Julien is really painting. And it's
_mine_, that big idea."

"Mightn't it be accompanied by a little idea to the effect that the
experience is likely to cost him pretty dear? What will be left when
Bobbie Holland goes?"

"Pooh! Don't be an oracular sphinx," was all that I got for my pains.

Nor did Miss Bobbie show any immediate symptoms of going. If the
painting seemed at times in danger of stagnation, the same could not be
said of the fellowship between painter and paintee. That nourished
along, and one day a vagrant wind brought in the dangerous element of
historical personalities. The wind, entering at the end of a session,
displaced a hanging above the studio door, revealing in bold script upon
the plastering Béranger's famous line:

"Dans un grenier qu'on est bien á vingt ans!"

"Did you write that there?" asked the girl.

"Seven long years ago. And meant it, every word."

"How did you come to know Béranger?"

"I'm French born."

"'In a garret how good is life at twenty,'" she translated freely. "I