From the low arm-chair by the fire-place rose Miss Lindsay, a fitting centre for her beautiful surroundings. She was one of those people who seem neither old nor young, for her intense personality quite overmastered any ravages time might have made in her appearance. The passing years, while they had brought a grey thread or two among the brown of the hair, had mellowed her expression; and the shining hazel eyes seemed as the windows of a soul behind, noble, tender, and full of sympathy. They were merry eyes, too, and they danced as their owner welcomed her guests.
"I've been expecting you, and the kettle's boiling! Sit here, Claudia, and you here, Kilmeny! Lorraine is her name? Never mind, I shall call her what I like. I hope you're fond of potato cake? And shortbread? It's the real kind from Edinburgh. You'd rather begin with plain bread and butter? What well brought-up girls!"
Seated on a round, silk cushion-footstool by the cheery wood fire, drinking tea from a cup covered with little pink roses, with the scent of late carnations wafted from a vase on the table, and her elbow almost touching the delicate blue-green velvet of Miss Lindsay's artistic dress, Lorraine looked round the studio, fascinated. She thought she had never seen such a delightful place. It appealed intensely to her romantic side, and with its bright draperies and cosy corners seemed like the opening scene of a novel. She was glad that the tea gave her some excuse for silence. She was too much interested in gazing about to find words for conversation.
Their hostess, wise in her generation, left her to herself until potato cakes and Scotch shortbread should thaw the ice and loose her tongue, and meantime discussed mutual friends with Claudia.
"We mustn't waste the precious daylight if you really want to see my pictures," she said after a while. "Come to the window and sit here on these chairs, and I'll put the sketches on the easel. They are a series I'm doing for a children's magazine in America. They're to be reproduced in colour."
Miss Lindsay's sketches were charming, and full of a quaint fancy. They were rendered in a medium of her own invention, a combination of pencil, paint, and crayon, which gave the soft effect of a pastel with the permanence of a water-colour. The first depicted a nurse holding by the hand a tiny child, who turned with wondering eyes to look at delicate little fairies which the grown-up person evidently did not see. In another a little boy sat in the forest playing with butterfly-winged elves who danced among the bright scarlet toadstools. A third showed a brownie in a tree-top, nestling by the side of a baby owl, and a fourth the pixies sporting under a starlit sky. There were many others, dainty, imaginative and ethereal, some illustrating poems or books, and some telling their own story, all painted with the same clever touch and light, brilliant colouring.
"These are my favourites, so I've shown them first, while the light lasts," said Miss Lindsay, "but I've heaps of other studies, landscapes mostly, sketches of Scotland I took this summer. I'll go on putting them on the easel, and when you're really bored stiff you must cry mercy, and I'll stop."
"Bored!" said Lorraine, with a sigh of intense satisfaction, "they're too lovely for anything! I'd give the world if I could paint like that!"
So they looked through piles of fascinating sketches till the short daylight had faded, and the logs on the fire began to throw queer shadows round the studio.
"We must go!" said Claudia at last. "I've some shopping to do for Violet on my way back, and she'll be raggy if I don't turn up soon. I rather believe the things are wanted for supper," she added casually.