He was not missed, and there was plenty for him to do at home, besides painting. There were the little red books of the butcher and baker to look after, and the lists to make out for the Civil Service Supply Association, and so forth; and then there were the twins. He had occasionally to take them out into the flowery meads himself—perambulator and all—and even sometimes to bath them at night, and teach them to say their prayers, and put them to bye-bye. For the nurse, a warm-hearted, but vain and extremely pretty woman in her humble way, was almost as fond of late hours and congenial society as her mistress, and much as she loved the pretty little darlings, who doated on her in return, she would sometimes yield to temptation, and leave them for gayer scenes.
They also doated, but in a distant and awestruck manner, on their mother, whom they very seldom saw, and then always in some new splendour of attire.
With unwashed faces and hands, in grimy little cotton frocks, and rice-milky bibs (everybody knows that the bib should be removed immediately after meals, and the pinafore resume its sway), they would patiently wait at the street-door, till they were rewarded by the sight of her, sweeping down the stairs and through the hall in her silks and muslins and laces; and before they could have said "Jack Spratt!" she was whisked away, telling them to be good, and kissing her daintily-gloved finger-tips to them, and showing her beautiful white teeth; and they would stare after her through the dust with wistful adoration.
Sometimes an organ would be playing a popular melody, such as "Tommy, make room," or "Don't make a noise" (which are not so bad when you don't know the words), and, excited by the pretty tune, they would pretend that the dust was a golden cloud, and the brougham or victoria a fiery chariot, and their mother a being made up of a fairy, a queen, an angel, a saint, and a goddess, going straight off to heaven in a mist of glory; till the nurse would come and box their ears for standing in the draught, for her love was tempered with a wise severity.
At other times Viscounts and Guardsmen would call, and smoke their cigarettes in the pretty front parlour (Mrs. Spratt had never allowed the trusty friends to smoke when she was by, even in the open air); and the twins had to be kept out of sight, because they had holes in their socks, may be, and were not fit to be seen. And when the Guardsmen and Viscounts had taken their departure, and the little darlings hurried down-stairs to get a glimpse of their "lovely Mamma," she would tell them they were a perfect disgrace, and pack them off, crying, to bed; and quench the longings of her maternal heart by nursing a pair of Pugs, the gift of His Grace the Duke of Pentonville.
Female finery is very costly nowadays, and has to be paid for. Think of Jack Spratt, in the intervals of his domestic duties, painting against time, and wasting all that eagle-winged genius of his on pot-boilers, to pay for his wife's gorgeous apparel!
All his pictures represent pretty sock-darners, for it was the sock-darning and the pretty face, and nothing else, that had so touched the great heart of the British public in his first exhibited work; so he turns them out by the dozen in every variety of size, costume, attitude, and complexion. But the hired models he has to employ, and the lay-figure he has to fall back upon when these cannot be got, have not the face and form of Mrs. Spratt; and all his sock-darners are inferior to that first one, and each sock-darner inferior to the last; so that a time must inevitably come when the great dealers will give him good advice instead of commissions, and finally cease to darken his doors, and he will have to darken theirs instead.
"A weary chase, a wasted hour!"
Be warned in time, ye rising young geniuses! Let no consideration tempt you into painting for filthy lucre, till you have realised a handsome independence by patient and steady devotion to Art for its own sweet sake!
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