things for instance as the exact appearance of the hero, the
particular bloom of the heroine. The author of course gave me a
lead, but there was a margin for interpretation. I took the Monarchs
into my confidence, I told them frankly what I was about, I mentioned
my embarrassments and alternatives. "Oh, take HIM!" Mrs. Monarch
murmured sweetly, looking at her husband; and "What could you want
better than my wife?" the Major inquired, with the comfortable
candour that now prevailed between us.

I was not obliged to answer these remarks--I was only obliged to
place my sitters. I was not easy in mind, and I postponed, a little
timidly perhaps, the solution of the question. The book was a large
canvas, the other figures were numerous, and I worked off at first
some of the episodes in which the hero and the heroine were not
concerned. When once I had set THEM up I should have to stick to
them--I couldn't make my young man seven feet high in one place and
five feet nine in another. I inclined on the whole to the latter
measurement, though the Major more than once reminded me that HE
looked about as young as anyone. It was indeed quite possible to
arrange him, for the figure, so that it would have been difficult to
detect his age. After the spontaneous Oronte had been with me a
month, and after I had given him to understand several different
times that his native exuberance would presently constitute an
insurmountable barrier to our further intercourse, I waked to a sense
of his heroic capacity. He was only five feet seven, but the
remaining inches were latent. I tried him almost secretly at first,
for I was really rather afraid of the judgment my other models would
pass on such a choice. If they regarded Miss Churm as little better
than a snare, what would they think of the representation by a person
so little the real thing as an Italian street-vendor of a protagonist