into reminiscences of the fashionable world he could lower the
conversation without a visible effort to my level.

So earnest a desire to please was touching in a man who could so
easily have knocked one down. He looked after the fire and had an
opinion on the draught of the stove, without my asking him, and I
could see that he thought many of my arrangements not half clever
enough. I remember telling him that if I were only rich I would
offer him a salary to come and teach me how to live. Sometimes he
gave a random sigh, of which the essence was: "Give me even such a
bare old barrack as THIS, and I'd do something with it!" When I
wanted to use him he came alone; which was an illustration of the
superior courage of women. His wife could bear her solitary second
floor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by various small
reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations
markedly professional--not letting them slide into sociability. She
wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not
cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be
kept in his place, she never thought me quite good enough for an
equal.

She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and
was capable of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as if she
were before a photographer's lens. I could see she had been
photographed often, but somehow the very habit that made her good for
that purpose unfitted her for mine. At first I was extremely pleased
with her lady-like air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to
follow her lines, to see how good they were and how far they could
lead the pencil. But after a few times I began to find her too
insurmountably stiff; do what I would with it my drawing looked like