“Still, I think it will be easier to fold down or hang up a Bluff than to hew through a great row of giant tree-trunks, Zan,” laughed Jane.
Finding Elena too serious over her painting to laugh or enjoy a joke about it, the other two girls called that all was ready for the admiring audience.
As the group stood about the Council circle looking over the woodland scene, some smiled, some sniffed, and some looked delighted at the result. Miss Miller saw the disappointment on Nita’s face and remarked: “We joyfully accept this attempt to paint the cherished mental picture of Wickeecheokee Camp—a scene that defies all words or arts to describe.”
“But Miss Miller, you must admit that this scenery is misleading to new Woodcrafters. We have ranted of stars, and streams, and the breath of balsam pines; but where, oh where, is there any such ‘atmosphere’ to be found in this painting!” Zan cried dramatically, as she posed and threw out both arms towards the canvas.
“Atmosphere! Good gracious, Zan, can you ask for more!” laughed Jane, in response to Zan’s call. “Did you ever smell such an odour of the turpentine that comes from pine?”
The girls all laughed but Nita complained pathetically:
“If you girls knew the job it was to smear all that paint on the old stuff, you wouldn’t poke fun at the trees. Why, the duck soaked up my paint as fast as I put it on, so of course I had to use gallons of turp to make it spread at all. Even then, it dried before I could shade any bark on my trees.”
“You all say I am too matter-of-fact a cook to be an artist, but I bet I could take a handful of the superfluous paint on those trees and knead it into something resembling ‘tall timbers’,” now commented Hilda.
“No one could! Why we had to hang the duck along the wall of our attic and stand on an old library table while we painted the tops of the trees! Just try to make bark or leaves on a tree that has to be painted with a heavy kalsomine brush. Our arms got so lame before we painted an hour that we fairly cried with the ache in the bones,” said Elena, defiantly.
“Yes, and Elena’s attic is so bespattered with raw umber and ivory black that Mrs. Marsh says she will have to stain the entire floor now to make it look decent again,” added Nita.