"Then you must hurry," smiled Miss Lindsay, who was well acquainted with the Bohemian ways of the Castleton family. "Even artists don't like to be kept waiting for their meals, however absorbed they get in their pictures." Then, turning to Lorraine, "I'm going to ask you to do something for me, Kilmeny. Will you come to the common with me one day this week at sunset, in the same brown dress you wore last Saturday, and let me sketch you among the thistles and bracken?"
Lorraine flushed with pleasure. She had never stood as model in her life, and, though the experience might be stale and wearisome to Claudia, to her it had all the charm of novelty.
"Of course I will. Would you like me to come to-morrow?" she murmured delightedly. "And—I hope you don't mind my asking—but I should like to know why you call me 'Kilmeny'?"
"Because you looked Kilmeny. Don't you know the poem? She was stolen away by the fairies, and brought up in the place that George Macdonald calls At the Back of the North Wind. Then:
'When seven long years were gone and fled,
When grief was forgotten and hope was dead,
And scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name:
Late, late in the gloaming Kilmeny home came'.
Well, you see, I'm going to paint you just coming home, in the evening glow with the yellow light behind, and the thistles and brown bracken. The sheaf of golden ragwort will be like a wand, and you'll still have the spell of fairyland in your face. I'm not sure if I shan't put in a few half-transparent fairies escorting you back; they'd blend among the thistledown. I can see it all in my mind's eye, if I can only manage to paint it. You'll be sure to come in the brown dress?"
"Of course I will, though it's a terribly old one I keep for scramble walks."
"That doesn't matter in the least. It's the colour I want. The whole scheme was a harmony in brown."
Lorraine went twice to stand for Miss Lindsay on the common, and several times afterwards to her studio to be sketched with more detail. Her new friend made three or four separate studies for the picture, intending to work from them afterwards in oils.
"I've sent for quite a decent-sized canvas," she said. "And I'm going to try one or two experiments. I'm not often pleased with my own work, but I like these studies, and feel inspired to do a three by two-and-a-half. Kilmeny, I believe you're going to prove my mascot!"