He held authority in that
house,--authority limited, indeed, to one-half of one afternoon in seven, but
very real while it lasted. Maisie had learned to appeal to him on many
subjects, from the proper packing of pictures to the condition of a smoky
chimney. The red-haired girl never consulted him about anything.
On the other hand, she accepted his appearances without protest, and watched
him always. He discovered that the meals of the establishment were irregular
and fragmentary. They depended chiefly on tea, pickles, and biscuit, as he had
suspected from the beginning. The girls were supposed to market week and week
about, but they lived, with the help of a charwoman, as casually as the young
ravens. Maisie spent most of her income on models, and the other girl revelled
in apparatus as refined as her work was rough. Armed with knowledge, dear-
bought from the Docks, Dick warned Maisie that the end of semi-starvation meant
the crippling of power to work, which was considerably worse than death.
Maisie took the warning, and gave more thought to what she ate and drank. When
his trouble returned upon him, as it generally did in the long winter
twilights, the remembrance of that little act of domestic authority and his
coercion with a hearth-brush of the smoky drawing-room chimney stung Dick like
a whip-lash.
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