This attic was the most curious room I ever saw.  It was large—­running clear across the house.  It had four gable-windows, and the ceiling sloped down on the sides, so there was danger of bumping your head if you played pussy-wants-a-corner.  Each girl had a window that she called her own, and the chintz curtains, made of chiffon (I think it was chiffon), were tied back with different-colored ribbons.  This big room was divided in the center by a curtain made of gunny-sack stuff, and this curtain was covered with pictures such as were never seen on land or sea.  The walls were papered with brown wrapping-paper, tacked up with brass-headed nails, and this paper was covered with pictures such as were never seen on sea or land.

The girls were all art students, and when they had nothing else to do they worked on the walls, I imagined, just as the Israelites did in Jerusalem years ago.  One half of the attic was studio, and this was where the table was set.  The other half of the attic had curious chairs and divans and four little iron beds enameled in white and gold, and each bed was so smoothly made up that I asked what they were for.  White Pigeon said they were bric-a-brac—­that the Attic Philosophers rolled themselves up in the rugs on the floor when they wished to sleep; but I have thought since that White Pigeon was chaffing me.

White Pigeon was the one I saw that first afternoon when I looked up, not down, out, not in.  She was from White Pigeon, Michigan, and from the very moment I told her I had a cousin living at Coldwater who was a conductor on the Lake Shore, we were as brother and sister.  White Pigeon was thirty or thirty-five, mebbe; she had some gray hairs mixed in with the brown, and at times there was a tinge of melancholy in her laugh and a sort of half-minor key in her voice.  I think she had had a Past, but I don’t know for sure.

Women under thirty seldom know much, unless Fate has been kind and cuffed them thoroughly, so the little peachblow Americaine did not interest me.  The peachblow was all gone from White Pigeon’s cheek, but she was fairly wise and reasonably good—­I’m certain of that.  She called herself a student and spoke of her pictures as “studies,” but she had lived in Paris ten years.  Peachblow was her pupil—­sent over from Bradford, Pennsylvania, where her father was a “producer.”  White Pigeon told me this after I had drunk five cups of tea and the Anglaise and the Soubrette were doing the dishes.  Peachblow the while was petulantly taking the color out of a canvas that was a false alarm.

White Pigeon had copied a Correggio in the Louvre nine years before, and sold the canvas to a rich wagon-maker from South Bend.  Then orders came from South Bend for six more Louvre masterpieces.  It took a year to complete the order and brought White Pigeon a thousand dollars.  She kept on copying and occasionally receiving orders from America; and when no orders came, potboilers were duly done and sent to worthy Hebrews in Saint Louis who hold annual Art Receptions and sell at auction paintings painted by distinguished artists with unpronounceable names, who send a little of their choice work to Saint Louis, because the people in Saint Louis appreciate really choice things.