'Oh, but I am sure this ought to be in the Royal Academy; I never saw anything there that I liked half so much. How clever you must be!'
Cherry could not but laugh at the extravagant compliment. 'My brother Edgar draws much better than that,' she said, producing a capital water-colour of a group of Flemish market-women.
'I shall always like yours best. Oh! and what is this?'
'I did not know it was there,' said Cherry, colouring, and trying to take it away.
'Oh, let me look. What! Is it a storm, or a regatta, or fishing boats? What is that odd light? What is written under? "The waves of this troublesome world." Why, that is in the Bible, is not it?'
'Thirteen boats, Cherry,' said Wilmet; 'is that a device of your own?'
'What, not copied? Oh dear! I wish I was so clever!'
'It is the sea of this life, isn't it?' said Angela, coming up. 'Is it ourselves, Cherry, all making for the golden light of Heaven, and the star of faith guiding them?'
'She reads it like a book,' exclaimed Alice. 'And those two close together—that means love, I suppose!'
'Love and help, the weak and the strong,' said Geraldine, in her earnest dreamy voice.