"May—may we see some of them—the pictures, I mean?" inquired Ricky timidly.
"If you can bear it. I use the side balcony for a workshop in this kind of weather. I'm working on a picture now, something more ambitious than I usually attempt in heat of this sort. But my model didn't show up this morning so I'm at a loose end."
She led them around the corner where Satan had disappeared and pointed to a table with a sketching board at one end, several canvases leaning face against the house, and an easel covered with a clean strip of linen. "My workshop. A trifle untidy, but then I am an untidy person. I'm expecting an order so I'm just whiling away my time working on an idea of my own until it comes."
Ricky touched the strip of covering across the canvas on the easel. "May I?" she asked.
"Yes. It might be a help, getting some other person's reaction to the thing. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do when I started but I don't think it's turning out to be what I planned."
Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas.