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was “after”; but it must be added that she did not make him feel very strongly on the matter. This however was not of importance, with her inner sense that Francie would never really do anything—that is would never really like anything—they didn’t like.
    Her sister’s docility was a great comfort to her, especially as it was addressed in the first instance to herself. She liked and disliked certain things much more than the younger girl did either; and Francie was glad to take advantage of her reasons, having so few of her own. They served—Delia’s reasons—for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any particular irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as the controller of her fate. A fate was rather a cumbersome and formidable possession, which it relieved her that some kindperson should undertake the keeping of. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first—before even her father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make any change. She could not have accepted any gentleman as a husband without reference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hair without a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson in consequence of his elder daughter’s revelations was to embrace the idea as a subject of daily pleasantry. He was fond, in his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, some humorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of true domestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery upon Francie’s conquest? Mr. Flack’s attributive intentions became a theme of indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed by such familiar references to them. “Well, he
has
told us about half we know,” she used often to reply.
    Among the things he told them was that this was the very best time in the young lady’s life to have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it done well; also that he knew a “lovely artist,” a young American of extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the work. He conducted them to this gentleman’s studio, where they saw several pictures by which they were considerably mystified. Francie protested that she didn’t want to be done
that
way, and Delia declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and
confections
when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, amongso many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. Mr. Waterlow’s productions struck them for the most part in the same manner as those garments which ladies classify as frights, and they went away with a very low opinion of the young American master. George Flack told them, however, that they couldn’t get out of it, inasmuch as he had already written home to the
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that Francie was to sit. They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she would have to; for they believed everything that they heard quoted from a newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idiotic to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap; for it was well known that Impressionism was going to be the art of the future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising Impressionist. It was a new system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn’t want to go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an article that would fetch five times the money in a couple of years. They were not in search of a bargain, but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason which they thought would be characteristic of earnest people; and he even convinced them, after a little, that when once they had got used to Impressionism