When the morning came, calm common sense battled with her impulsive excitement. She almost cried with vexation when she found her paintbox nearly empty, and not a piece of canvas or paper in her portfolio. But she would not be deterred from her purpose.
"I shall do nothing rash," she argued with herself, "but paint I shall, and as I have no money I shall beg, borrow, or steal. And yet—yet—it is all so hopeless. What should I do if my only relative cast me off? I can but wait. A change must come in my life, sooner or later. I will go out and talk to Rawlings. He is better, so will be in his beloved garden again."
She found him sowing seed. He looked up with a bright smile at her as she came.
"Eh, Miss Jean, 'tis good to be in the air agen. I have been giving thanks with the birds."
"You're always giving thanks, Rawlings. I wish I had any luck to thank for."
Jean balanced herself on the side of a cucumber frame, and looked about her with discontented eyes. It was a fresh clear morning, and the sun was streaming through the swiftly-passing clouds. The old kitchen garden, with its deep red walls and box-edged borders, was full of fresh young life, and Jean's fretfulness passed away.
"I shall make a picture of this garden," she said joyously, "and shall call it 'old age and youth.'"
"Meanin' you and me?" queried Rawlings, dubiously.
"No, I was thinking of the garden itself. How many lives have lived and died in it, Rawlings—vegetable life I mean!"
Rawlings shook his head.