THE WINNER OF THE JUNIOR CUP
They took the Admiral’s advice the next day, and rested. Dorothy and Bess were anxious to look over the shells and specimens the girls had found during the summer, and helped arrange them for the home going the end of the week. The two shell curtains that Kate and Isabel had made were completed, and ready to be shipped by express, with some of the heavier shells.
Crullers had surprised everybody by finding out a new way to use the small shells in decoration. She had had quite a taste for drawing and applied design at school, and now had glued the shells to heavy cardboard, after first tracing out a decorative design. The effect was surprisingly unique and attractive. Ted had looked at the result with a speculative eye, but she was generous with her praise, and frank spoken.
“I never thought old Crullers had such a knack in her fingertips,” she said.
“Didn’t you?” Polly asked, smiling. “I always knew that she loved beautiful things, and when you do you’ll generally make something beautiful yourself to add to it, don’t you know?”
“I know what you mean,” Ted agreed, pushing back her red curls restlessly. “Fraulein called it the personal quality in art, the gift of expression. What was that old painter’s name who used such a wonderful red in his pictures, and when he died they found it was his heart’s blood he had been painting with. I guess that’s personal expression, isn’t it? I haven’t any, Miss Calvert says. I haven’t any artistic sense.”
“We all have it,” Polly insisted. “You cannot help but have it, because it’s the gift of yourself. What do you like to do more than anything else in the world?”
Ted meditated, then her face brightened.
“Travel,” she said. “Walk, ride, swim, run, sail, do anything as long as I’m going some place.”
Polly laughed heartily.