The four Corners in camp

by Amy Ella Blanchard

“Oh, various things. Take long walks, have supper on the rocks, afternoon tea at the studio. Miss Romaine goes off sketching with Marc in the morning, Miss Vanderver and Pinch take a row on the lake, or she sits for him while he makes pencil sketches. Sometimes I am pressed into service for an illustration, but they generally quite approve of my absence, I should judge, although Marc will not allow me to mention leaving for another week.”

“Does Miss Romaine sketch?” asked Nan with a little hesitancy at appearing to have any interest at all in the young woman.

“A little, I believe. She calls herself Marc’s pupil.”

“And Miss Vanderver?”

“Doesn’t do anything but listen to Pinch’s compliments. I believe that is a sure thing, that affair. The young ladies have an ancient great-aunt, or cousin or some one with them, but she never appears except on rare occasions, Pinch being supposed to be sufficiently a guardian angel for his sister and she for her friend. The aunt, a Mrs. Shepherd, sits on the porch of the farmhouse and does knitting, I take it, except when she is asleep or at meals.”

“Do you like the young ladies?” Mary Lee asked.

“Oh, yes. They are harmless, rather silly, but well versed in small talk and the society column; you know the kind. I used to think Marc had something in him over there in Munich, but Pinch is only playing at being an artist, at best. It would be much better for Marc if he were to chum up with some of the hard workers. He’ll lose the little grip he has if he tries to follow Pinch’s lead. He maintains that he is doing it for the sake of the acquaintance it will give him among the rich and the great who will buy his pictures, but ‘I hae me doots.’”

Nan listened to all this with open ears, somewhat resentful that Dr. Paul should impute such motives to her hero, and believing that he underrated his friend. “It’s not very nice of him,” she told herself, and the next time they were alone together she charged him with not being a loyal friend, thereby considerably mystifying the doctor, for he certainly had tried to be loyal to her, he considered. But because of all this Nan in her heart hugged the delusion that the artist was a much abused and misunderstood person who she could excuse for any of these supposed shortcomings. Of course if Miss Romaine were his pupil they had to go off in company, particularly if Mr. Romaine and Miss Vanderver were interested in one another. A man had to be a little politic when he wanted to succeed in a profession. Probably there was no sentiment between them at all. And then back again came the dream of a meeting on the point, the violin, the Swan Song, and all the rest of it.

All this which went on inside of Nan’s brain was not guessed at by the other girls, for Nan carefully guarded her thoughts and when at last she finished the buttercups and the small case, it was put away out of sight. If Mr. Wells ever asked for it he should have it; if not she would keep it as a precious souvenir, with a daisy he had once worn in his coat, and a slip of paper on which he had written his name and hers once when they were playing a game together and he kept the score.

So the days went by, and though once in a while some mention was made of Mr. Wells no one seemed very unhappy because of his absence. One afternoon he did stop for a few minutes and Nan, in a contradiction which she could not account for, flew to the woods and hid herself. All that she learned later was that he had been there, had stayed a few minutes, had asked after every one who did not happen to be on the premises, and had gone away again.