"Many of them began as sinners. I expect even St. Francis of Assisi howled when he was a baby, and smacked his nurse. We all feel more or less scratchy sometimes. What you want, child, is a good blow on the hills. If it should be as fine and mild to-morrow as it was this morning, we'll have our painting lesson out of doors. Bring your thick coat and a wrap and we'll go right up towards Tangy Point, take our lunch and our sketch-books with us, find a sheltered place in the sun, and paint some pretty little bit on the cliffs. You'll go back to school on Monday feeling at peace with all mankind, or rather girlkind. Do you like my prescription?"
"Rather! You're the best doctor out! It'll be glorious to get away from everybody for a day. I have too much of Monica on Saturdays as a rule. I've an instinct it's going to be fine to-morrow!"
Porthkeverne had its share of sea-fog in winter, but it also had its quota of sunshine, and this particular February day turned out a foretaste of spring. Birds were singing everywhere as teacher and pupil, with lunch and sketching materials in their satchels, set off on their tramp over the moors. They crossed the common, where Lorraine had stood among the thistles for "Kilmeny", and came to "the little grey church on the windy hill", which Mr. Castleton had chosen as the scene for his illustrations to "The Forsaken Merman". The sound of the organ came through the open door, and, peeping in, Lorraine could see Morland's golden hair gleaming like a saint's halo in the chancel, and caught a glimpse of Landry's perfect profile as he sat listening in the dusty gallery.
"Shall we go and speak to them?" asked Margaret Lindsay.
"No," said Lorraine emphatically. "I'm not friends with Morland to-day. He promised to practise an accompaniment with me last night, and he never turned up. I shall just leave him to himself. He's a bad boy!"
"He has his limitations!" agreed Margaret.
The breath of early spring was in the air as they walked through the cluster of houses termed by courtesy "the village", and, climbing a stile, took the path along the cliffs. On such days the sap seems to rise in human beings as well as in the vegetable world. Lorraine literally danced along. Margaret Lindsay's artist eyes were busy registering impressions of sunlight on pearly stretches of sea, or effects of green sward and grey rock in shadow.
"The Cornish coast in February is perfect," she decided, "and it's so delightfully quiet. Heaven defend me from the 'fashionable resort', which is some people's idea of the seaside. I read the most delicious poem once. It began—
She was a lady of high degree,
A poor and unknown artist he.
'Paint me,' she said, 'a view of the sea.'
So he painted the sea as it looked the day
When Aphrodite arose from its spray,
And as she gazed on its face the while,
It broke in its countless dimpled smile.
'What a poky, stupid picture!' said she.
'It isn't anything like the sea!'
The wretched artist, in several more verses of poetry which I forget, paints the sea in every possible effect of storm and calm, all to the scorn of the lady, who decides—