"That's where you made such a perfect model. I could see the glamour of the fairies in your face, and tried to catch it in my painting. I always contend that one of the chief elements in a good sitter is imagination, so as to maintain the right expression. One sees many apathetic portraits, and knows that the originals must have been feeling bored to tears. You never looked bored."
"No, the fairies were dancing round me all the time! You conjured them up. Do you know, Carina, I think fairies are your forte? I like those small paintings of them better than anything else you do."
"Those coloured frontispieces for children's magazines? They're certainly the only things in which I've ever succeeded. It's well to realize one's limitations. I've been so ambitious in my time, and wanted to paint historic scenes and battle-pieces, and other things quite beyond my powers. It's strange if the line we rather despise turns out to be our best bit of work. Look at Edward Lear. He was a rather classically inclined artist, whose serious work seems to have vanished, yet he is known and appreciated all over the world by the delightful and inimitable Book of Nonsense that he knocked off in a few leisure hours to amuse the children of a noble family whose portraits he was painting. Hans Andersen, too, is another instance. No one ever now reads his numerous novels and solid books, but his fairy-tales have been translated into almost every language. Nothing so charming and poetical has ever been written. His is a magic flute that draws children of every clime and age to listen to him. Not that I'm for a moment comparing myself to Edward Lear or Hans Andersen! All the same, I think I shall take a hammer and smash up those statues I was trying my hand at, and stick to fairies for the future."
"I hope they'll hang 'Kilmeny' on the line!"
"So do I, but I don't expect it. It will be most exciting to go up to town and see it. I wonder——"
"You wonder what?" asked Lorraine, for Margaret had suddenly stopped short.
"Never mind! It was an idea that came into my head. Perhaps I'll tell you some other time."
"Oh, do tell me now!"
"Certainly not—you must wait. No, it's no use your guessing, for I shan't say whether you're right or wrong."
Lorraine's guesses, which were of rather a wild description, did not come anywhere near the real truth, which was sprung upon her a few days later by her enterprising friend. It was nothing more or less than an invitation to go up to London with Miss Lindsay and see "Kilmeny" for herself on the wall of Burlington House.