For some days Katrine had been convinced that there was another artist in the neighbourhood. She had caught a glimpse of an easel fixed in a field, she had found a tube of paint lying in the road, and had noticed upon a paling the sc.r.a.pings of a palette. She had not yet, however, been vouchsafed a sight of the stranger, against whom she had conceived a violent prejudice. She had come to regard Heathwell as the private sketching property of herself and Miss Aubrey, and regarded the new-comer in the light of a poacher on their art preserves. He or she--she did not even know the s.e.x of the intruder--might very well have chosen some other village, in her opinion, instead of fixing upon this particular Paradise. All the same, she was inquisitive, and would have liked very much to see the unknown artist's work. One afternoon Miss Aubrey took the Marsdens to a little subject in a meadow on the road to the river. She watched them begin to draw in a picturesque railing and hawthorn stump, then went herself to another position in the field. Left alone, the girls worked for some time in silence, Katrine with whole-hearted absorption, and Gwethyn in a more dilettante fashion. The latter did not care to stick at things too long. She soon grew tired, and threw down her brush.

"Ugh! It makes me stiff to sit so still. I'm going to walk round the pasture. Do come, Katrine! Oh, how you swat! You might take two minutes'

rest. We're just above the road here, and I believe somebody's sitting down below. I can smell tobacco. I'm going to investigate."

Gwethyn came back in a few moments with her eyes dancing.

"It's an artist!" she whispered. "He's painting in the road exactly below us. I can see his picture through the hedge. Come and look!"

Such exciting information broke the spell of Katrine's work. She put down her palette at once, and followed Gwethyn. It was impossible to resist taking a peep at the interesting stranger's sketch.

"You must promise not even to breathe. I should be most annoyed if he happened to see us," she declared.

"All right! I'll be mum as a mouse, and walk as softly as a p.u.s.s.y-cat.

I'll undertake it won't be my fault if he divines our existence."

Very gently the two girls crept along the edge of the pasture, trying not to rustle the gra.s.s, and heroically refraining from conversation.

"Here we are!" signalled Gwethyn at last, pausing at a thin place in the hedge, which might have been made on purpose for a peep-hole. Through a frame of sycamore leaves they could peer into the road exactly at the spot where the rival easel was pitched. The artist's back was towards them; they could see nothing but his tweed suit, his grey hair under a brown hat, and the skilful right hand which kept dabbing subtle combinations of half-tones upon his canvas. He seemed utterly unconscious of their presence, and worked away in sublime ignorance that two pairs of eyes were following every stroke of his brush. He was no amateur, that was plain. The girls were sufficient judges of painting to recognize that though the sketch was still at an elementary stage he had made a masterly beginning. Katrine watched quite fascinated, trying to decide what colours he was using, and in what proportion he had mixed them. If she could only see his palette, she might perhaps discover the secret of that particularly warm shadow he was in the act of placing under the near tree. She craned her head a little forward through the hedge. Gwethyn, equally anxious to see everything possible, pressed closely behind her. Whether it was the heat of the sun, or whether a sycamore leaf tickled the end of her nose, I cannot tell. The cause is immaterial, but the awful and tangible result was that Katrine--Katrine, who prided herself upon prunes and prism--burst without warning into a violent and uncontrollable sneeze! Naturally the artist turned at the unwonted sound, to catch an astonishing vision of two dismayed faces peeping like dryads from the greenery behind him.

Katrine dashed off like a thief detected red-handed, but she had hardly gone a yard when Gwethyn seized her by the arm.

"Katrine! Stop! There's no need to run in that silly way. Can't you see it's Mr. Freeman?"

"What's the matter, girls?" asked Miss Aubrey, who had walked up to correct their drawings.

Katrine felt caught on both sides, but there seemed nothing for it but to pa.s.s off the affair as well as she could.

"We've met an old friend of my father's," she explained. "I suppose we may say 'How do you do?' to him over the hedge?"

If the girls were surprised to see Mr. Freeman, he was equally astonished to find them at Heathwell.

"Didn't know you were at school here. It's a grand part of the world for sketching. Never saw so many paintable bits in my life. My diggings are in the village. Yes, come down and look at my picture, if you like."

Mr. Freeman had often been a guest at the Marsdens'. The girls knew him well. He had criticized Katrine's earliest art efforts, and had painted a portrait of Gwethyn when she was about seven years old. He seemed to have grasped the humour of the present situation, for he gazed up the bank with twinkling eyes. Katrine hastily introduced Miss Aubrey over the top of the hedge, not a very dignified method of presenting a friend, but the only one available. Fortunately Miss Aubrey was not Mrs.

Franklin! An invitation to make a nearer acquaintance with the picture was irresistible. Katrine took her teacher by the arm, and pulled her gently in the direction of the gate. She offered no objection.

"I was most extremely glad for Mr. Freeman to meet Miss Aubrey," Katrine confided to Gwethyn afterwards. "Two such good artists positively ought to know each other. They've each got a picture in the Academy, and--isn't it funny?--in the very same room--numbers 402 and 437!"

"They seemed to find plenty to talk about," returned Gwethyn. "I hope Mr. Freeman really will look us up at school."

Not only did their artist friend take an early opportunity of calling on them at Aireyholme, but he asked Miss Aubrey to bring them to see his sketches in the little studio he had rigged up in the village. It was a treat to be shown his charming interpretations of Heathwell and its inhabitants. He had already requisitioned some of the Gartley children as models, and was in ecstasies over their picturesque appearance. His study of the High Street at sunset was a poem on canvas.

"This beats every other place I've ever stayed at for painting," he announced. "Now I've found this studio, I shall stop here for the summer. There's any amount to be done."

"You'll certainly find plenty of subjects round about," agreed Miss Aubrey.

"I wonder if the painting is altogether the whole of the attraction,"

mused Gwethyn, who in some respects was wise beyond her years.

Miss Aubrey was an immense favourite at Aireyholme, but among all the girls she had no stancher and more whole-hearted admirer than Githa Hamilton. Githa was not demonstrative--she never said much; but whenever possible she haunted her idol like a drab little shadow, watching her with adoring eyes, and hanging upon her words. Miss Aubrey had a very shrewd suspicion that Githa was lonely at home and left out at school.

Realizing her peculiar disposition, she made no great fuss over her, but every now and then managed un.o.btrusively to include the girl in some special expedition or particular treat. At an early date in June she arranged to take a few members of the painting cla.s.s on a Sat.u.r.day excursion to Chiplow, where a fine old abbey would provide a capital subject for an afternoon's sketching.

Chiplow was on a different line of railway from Carford, therefore the Heathwell local trains were of little use in getting there. The quickest route was to bicycle to Chorlton Lacy, a station on the South Midland line, seven miles away, whence they could book excursion tickets to Chiplow. Only girls possessing bicycles were available for the jaunt, and as for one reason or another several of these were obliged to be excluded, Miss Aubrey invited Githa to accompany them and make up the dozen required for the issue of the special cheap holiday bookings. The poor little Toadstool turned up radiant with delight, and looking really almost pretty in her khaki-coloured cycle costume, scarlet tie, and poppy-trimmed Panama. A Union Jack fluttered from her newly-polished machine, and in the basket which hung from the handle-bars she had a store of home-made toffee as well as her sketch-book.

In first-rate spirits the party set off along the road, riding in style through the village, with much ringing of bells to scare away children.

They free-wheeled for nearly a mile downhill, and then had a splendid level stretch of road beside the river bank.

"We're getting along capitally," said Miss Aubrey. "At this rate we shall be at the station half an hour too soon."

"Unless we meet with some excitement!" ventured Gwethyn hopefully.

If Gwethyn craved for excitement, she was soon to find it. They had not gone half a mile farther before their way was barred by an enormous bull, which, to judge by a gap in the hedge, must have broken out of a neighbouring field. There it stood, in a dip of the road, right in their path, tossing its great head, pawing the ground, and bellowing l.u.s.tily.

The cyclists jumped off their machines, decidedly scared by the apparition that faced them.

"Oh, but doesn't it look a splendid subject?" gasped Katrine, whose artistic instincts were uppermost even at such a crisis. "If we could only draw it!"

"Don't be idiotic!" cried Nan Beth.e.l.l. "It would be like taking a snapshot of a lion when it's rushing at you with open jaws!"

"I'm sure Rosa Bonheur or Lucy Kemp-Welch would have sketched it."

"Then they'd have been impaled, one on each horn, and serve them right for tempting Providence. Look at the dust the creature's raising in the road!"

All the party were in consternation. Miss Aubrey, who felt the responsibility of her charge, and moreover had a natural fear of bulls, for once almost lost her presence of mind.

"What are we to do? It would be madness to try and ride past it. I suppose we shall have to turn back home," she fluttered.

"Can't we call for help? Halloo!" shouted some of the girls.

"There's n.o.body about."

"I see a hat in that field!"

"It's only a scarecrow!"

Then Githa, who had been standing silently by her bicycle, suddenly a.s.sumed direction of the situation.

"Stop shouting! You'll excite the bull!" she commanded. "Now let us stack our machines in the ditch, and climb over this fence into the field. Come along, quick! This way!"

It seemed such excellent advice that even Miss Aubrey obeyed quite meekly. Leaving their bicycles below, they all scrambled hastily up the bank and over some hurdles into a field.

"We're safe, but we shall lose our train!" lamented Gladwin Riley.

"Not a bit of it! We'll turn up in time at the station, you'll see!"

replied Githa. "Just leave it to me!"

She broke a stick from the hedge, picked up several large stones, and then ran along the meadow for some distance and climbed another fence.