Free The Head Girl at the Gables by Angela Brazil Page B

long pieces of sea-weed draped artistically here and there. Fragments of wreckage had been neatly sawn and nailed together to form a cupboard, a table, and some seats, and just inside the entrance, in white pebbles, was the word "Welcome".
    Landry, in his own way as pleased as his brother, stood beaming. Morland, though inwardly proud, affected nonchalance.
    "Couldn't make it look much, of course," he apologized.
    "Much? Why, it's topping!"
    "It's like a fairy-tale! However did you find time to do all this?"
    "Oh! I just worked a bit," murmured Morland modestly.
    The first picnic in the grotto was a huge success. To be sure the table was unsteady, and had a decided lop to one end, and the benches felt slightly insecure, but the girls said that added an element of adventure, for you never knew when you might be suddenly precipitated on to the floor. They put the cocoa, biscuits, and matches in tins, and stowed them away inside the new cupboard which Morland had placed in an angle of the rocky shelf, then, fearing that the rising tide would cover the shore below and cut off their retreat, they bade a regretful farewell to all their arrangements, promising themselves the pleasure of coming often again.
    It seemed too early to go straight home, so they spent the afternoon rambling about the cliffs, watching the sea-birds or the waves that were dashing below. Time flew apace, and when they came down the hill again from Tangy Point the sky was golden with sunset. The warm evening light flooded the common, where brown bracken grew like a forest, and goldfinches flitted about among a grove of thistles. Lorraine, who had an eye for colour, picked a large wand-like sheaf of yellow ragwort, and, holding it over her shoulder, trudged through the thistles, sending showers of down to float in the breeze, and dispersing the goldfinches from their feast. With her eyes on the horizon instead of on the ground in front, she nearly walked into an easel that was stationed among the bracken. Its owner sprang up to save it, and Lorraine, stopping just in time, paused with her russet dress and flying brown hair a dark mass against the gold of the sky and the thistle-down background. There was a second of silence as a pair of clear hazel eyes grasped the picturesque impression and registered it; then a mellow voice murmured: "Kilmeny!"
CHAPTER VII
    Kilmeny
    "I'm dreadfully sorry!" apologized Lorraine.
    "It doesn't matter at all. You did no damage."
    "But I nearly knocked over your picture!"
    "A miss is as good as a mile!"
    "Why, it's Miss Lindsay!" exclaimed Claudia, coming up. "I thought you were still in Scotland."
    "I've been back a week and am quite settled down again at Porthkeverne, and hope to stay here all the winter. Tell your father I'm coming up to see his pictures one day. I hear he's painting in pastel now. I've been going in for tempera. How are the babies? And Madox? He's a special friend of mine. I've brought them a box of real shortbread from Edinburgh. Yes, I'm making a sketch of this piece of the common. It appeals to me in the sunset."
    "What a charming lady!
Who
is she?" whispered Lorraine as their party passed on.
    "She's an artist--Miss Lindsay. We knew her in London, and it was she who advised Father to come and live at Porthkeverne. I'm glad she did, for we all like it just heaps better than Kensington."
    "Does she live here?"
    "She has rooms in the town and a studio down by the harbour, but she goes about to a great many places sketching. You'd love her pictures."
    "I wish I could see them."
    "Perhaps she'd let me take you some day to her studio."
    "Oh! do you think she really would? Do you know I've never been inside a studio!"
    Claudia laughed.
    "You wouldn't want to if you'd had to sit as a model as often as I have! Would she, Morland?"
    "Rather not. As a family I reckon we're fed up with studios," returned Morland. "Thank goodness I'm beyond the 'Bubbles' stage of beauty. It's Madox's turn for that!"
    "Don't congratulate