“No doubt it has afforded him the supremest delight,” whispered Miss Lowe to Miss Barton, “and it’s evidently a subject of the utmost satisfaction to his mother, so I won’t make carping criticisms, but take it as a moral for the necessity of due humility over one’s own productions. Perhaps mine would be as diverting to an Academician as his are to me.”
In the same room Mrs. Marsden showed her visitors a mysterious oil-painting, black with age and hideous beyond compare, which she informed them was an original portrait of Nell Gwynn. She supposed it to be immensely valuable, and was keeping it safe until prices rose a little higher still, after the war, when she had hopes of launching it on the auction rooms in London, and realizing a sum that would make her family’s fortune.
“An ambition she’ll never realize in this wide world,” said Miss Barton afterwards, “for the thing is absolutely not genuine. It’s not the right period for Nell Gwynn, and it’s so atrociously badly painted that it’s obviously the work of some village 163 artist. She’s in for a big disappointment some day, poor woman! I hadn’t the heart to squash her, when she seemed so proud of it—especially as she was still a little huffy that we hadn’t consumed her black-currant tarts!”
Though physically they were rather weary, the girls were sorry when their week’s strawberry picking came to an end. It was found that when their canteen bills had been paid, and railway fares subtracted, they had each earned on an average a little over five shillings; some who were quicker pickers exceeding that amount, and others falling below. They decided to pool the general proceeds, and present the sum cleared—£4, 16s. 8d.—to the Hospital for Disabled Soldiers as their “bit” towards their country. They went back to school feeling highly patriotic, and burning to boast of their experiences to those slackers who had chosen the parental roof for their holidays.
“I’d have loved it!” protested Fauvette, “but I really did have a very nice time at home. My cousin was back on leave. He’s in the Flying Corps, and he’s six feet three in his stockings—and—well—I’ve got his photo upstairs, if you’d like to look at it.”
“Oh, we’re all accustomed to gipsies and poachers now, and don’t think anything of airmen!” returned Morvyth nonchalantly (she was apt to sit on Fauvette). “You should see my snapshots of the strawberry pickers!”
“And mine!” broke in Cynthia Greene. “By the by, I wrote my name and school address on a card, and packed it inside one of my strawberry baskets. I put on it: ‘Will the finder kindly 164 write to a blue-eyed, fair-haired girl who feels lonely?’”
“Cynthia, you didn’t!” exploded the others.
“I did—crystal! Why shouldn’t I? Lonely soldiers beg for letters, and it’s as lonely at school as in barracks any day, at least I find it so!”
“Suppose somebody takes you at your word and sends an answer?”