STEVEN LAWRENCE, YEOMAN
By Mrs. Edwards,
Author of "Archie Lovell."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE BARRYS' RECEPTION.
THE Barrys' apartment was on the third floor of an old hotel in one of the quietest quarters of the town; an apartment wanting in ormolu and velvet, but open and airy; more hospitable, far, Steven thought as he entered, than Dora's mouse-trap entresol in the best situation in Paris. He was late: Mr. Barry, turning round from the card-table, rallied him as he came in about his fashionable hours: and all the guests, who were coming to the "reception" (four or five Frenchmen, none of them in evening dress), were already assembled. Mademoiselle Barry, alone at a little table by the fireside, was drawing. The lamp placed close at her left hand—the methodical arrangement of her pencils and papers—the silence of the room; the faces of the men around the card-table—gave Steven, he knew not why, the idea that the scene was a habitual one in the girl's life. He went up to her at once, and she put down her pencil and bade him, with a friendly-enough smile, take a chair at her side.
"I needn't interrupt you," said Steven, looking over her work. "Go on with your drawing; I should like to watch you."
"But I can't draw when I am watched," said Mademoiselle Barry, "and I am so tired that I am glad to stop. After all you were forced to go through in the Luxembourg," she added, "I shouldn't think you wanted anything more in the shape of pictures to-day?"
"I 'went through' what gave me pleasure," said Steven in his frank way. "This morning made me feel that if I was ever so little better educated, I might get to like pictures—after a fashion of my own. Let me look at your drawing, please. Why, what is it done on—wood? I thought people drew on canvas, or cardboard, or tackle of that kind."
"People who draw for money, draw on the tackle their masters bid them use," said Mademoiselle Barry, smiling a little smile to herself at the Englishman's ignorance. "I'm not a young lady artist, sir. I make money, good gold pieces of twenty francs, by my drawings. This sketch will appear publicly as one of the chef
