Henriette also looked at her sister rather quickly. Helen's eyes smiled above her coffee cup, which hid the lump of nose; they, too, had a teasing spark.
"No," she replied. "Oils take much longer than charcoal. Let Henriette get started before I butt in. Isn't that it—butt in?"
"Yes, the correct American for your meaning—though a little archaic now—but not for mine," he said. "I'm ready for all the artists. Let them come."
"Not this morning," Helen concluded.
She had already put on her sun hat and gone when Madame Ribot smilingly from the doorway watched Henriette and Phil, her easel under his arm, going up the path. The bordering trees of the little estate were on a terrace which gave a broad view. Here Henriette set up her easel and put Phil in a rustic chair in the position that pleased her, his only condition that he sit facing so he could watch her at work being granted. She was the real picture to him; the one that made it worth while to pose. He could look past her over the fields rolling away to the horizon, with the rows of trees of the main road marching across the foreground.
Human specks dotted the fields, women, old men, and boys who had been at work since dawn harvesting the grain, since the able-bodied men were away at war. A figure which he recognised approached a nearby group. The bent backs straightened. Faintly he could hear their voices as they passed the time of day, and then a laugh all round as Helen became one of them in effort as well as in spirit, raking and binding the sheaves.
For the time being he said nothing about it to Henriette, but occasionally his glance stole away from her toward Helen, who kept on with her labour. The breeze carried her voice and laugh, which was like a rich echo of Henrietta's, and at length he heard her singing a French song, in which the other workers joined. Time passed rapidly watching the figures in the field and Henriette—too rapidly.
"We are started, though there is nothing to see," said Henriette finally. "We will rest till after luncheon."
The peasants, too, had stopped work. They were seating themselves on the sheaves or sprawling on the hard, dry, yellow stubble for their mid-day meal. He heard them laugh at some sally of Helen's before she started across the field toward where he was sitting. Flushed from the sun and exercise, she cried out, as she approached:
"They say I do it like a veteran! It was great fun—and I was helping France!"