Promising to hurry, she closed the door and went to the window to hang out, gazing. Wooden shoes clattered merrily on the cobbles of the quay, and along the distant dunes, purpling with dusk, smoke rose from the smouldering potash fires where, Nancy had said, the thrifty Bretons burned seaweed for fertilizer.
She was pleasantly weary and very hungry. All last night she had been traveling, more than half the width of France from Paris to Brest. Uncle Leslie had sailed from Brest after the Armistice, she remembered, and its steep streets and ancient houses, built on half a dozen different levels, had fascinated her during the hours she had to wait for her trolley to Le Conquet.
It had been surprisingly hard to leave Paris. That city had changed for her, almost overnight. She could have stayed on there, almost happily, doing paintings and more paintings, digging herself in. Almost happily, but not quite. After all, she could have done that in New York. And what was the use of keeping on with a thing, once you had learned you could really do it, once you had met it and conquered it? While she was over here it was up to her to travel, learn, experiment, grow.
And here, right outside the window was her first view of a real French village. How different from Paris, how quaint and sweet and clean—and oh, how paintable it was going to be. No wonder Nancy’s famous artist mother planned to spend her summer here. Perhaps Mrs. Brewster would be able to tell her how to find a model for the next cover, the Christmas number of Little One’s Magazine. Cynthia wanted to paint a little dark eyed Breton girl or boy, in wooden shoes and quaint cap for that December number.
Goodness, there was the dinner gong! Cynthia pulled in her head just in time to face Nancy at the door. “Mother just came up stairs. Want to come say hello?”
Cynthia sneezed and fumbled in her suitcase for a clean handkerchief. “Just a moment, Nan. I’ve been so busy just looking that I haven’t had time to get washed or combed. Now where did I put those hankies? Pour out the water, will you honey? So I can wash. Oh ... darling Mrs. Brewster!”
Nancy’s mother, as pretty as ever, tanned from sea bathing, seemed hardly older than her daughter. “We’re so glad to have you here, my child. I want to hear all about your covers, and see what you’ve been doing. Nancy tells me you’ve already completed one painting, in Paris—Here’s the dining room, and this is our table.”
There were several painters and two writers among the jolly little crowd at the Hotel Des Poissons. Cynthia got a tremendous thrill out of having these older people, all professional craftsmen of proved ability, regard her with respect and as an artist already “arrived.” Yet she was, after all, also a professional, traveling, actually seeing the world on what she earned with her brush and pencil. When she stopped to think about that, Cynthia always felt like a fairy-tale-princess who has rubbed the magic ring. But generally she was too busy to think about it.
The next morning Nancy took her to explore the little town, not a long tour, for there were not six streets in the whole place. The ancient sturdy houses, facing the sea for half a dozen centuries seemed to grow from the very rock on which they were built. Below the hotel one crossed a bridge, at high water, or walked on a raised path across the sands, at low tide, to a long sandy beach bordered with dunes and tall waving grasses, very white and flat and clean.
Cynthia surveyed the clear stretch of deserted sand, and Nancy’s brief little bathing suit with a longing eye. “I won’t go swimming for a day or two, I guess,” she decided. “This cold doesn’t seem to get any better and I’d rather not risk it.” She wondered if she were being old-maid fussy about herself.