"I wonder, Gerry, why you decided so suddenly that you wished to study art?" she said. "Until this summer I have never even heard you mention the subject. Do you intend making a business of it some day? You won't mind my speaking of this, but you have always said you had to do something or other to make your own living."
Instead of replying at once Gerry hummed the first line of a song, also moving on so quickly that Sally, who was averse to violent exercise, had difficulty in keeping up with her.
"Certainly not, Sally," she answered finally. "Besides, if I ever should develop such a foolish idea, who do you think would buy my silly little pictures, except perhaps Mrs. Burton? I do wish she were my real aunt; I am oftentimes jealous of Peggy. But really I began studying art last winter chiefly on her account. She insisted that I should not idle away all my time, so I concluded that I would prefer being an art student to attending a regular school.
"Mrs. Burton was delighted, because she thinks it would be a good plan for me to become a dressmaker or a designer. I am so fond of clothes and she believes the art lessons will be of value to my future work. However, my dear Sally, nothing is further from my own expectations. You and I for different reasons must make marriage our career. You were created for domesticity and I, well, I simply must marry some one with money. I used to hope that Mrs. Burton might do a great deal for me some day, before I knew about her own family and her Camp Fire group. Now I realize that she only intends helping me to help myself, as the highly moral phrase goes."
"But haven't you any people of your own, or any close friends?" Sally demanded with the persistency which belonged to her disposition. Half a dozen times before she had asked this same question without receiving a satisfactory reply.
Gerry only laughed good naturedly. Sally's curiosity amused her.
"No people and no friends I care to talk about, my dear. You know I have told you this several times before."
In spite of the fact that by this time the girls had walked for three or four miles, up until now Gerry had not suggested sitting down to begin her sketching. At this moment she moved over to the edge of a cliff, glancing down at the beach below.
"Come, Sally, see what a fascinating place I have discovered. Suppose we climb down to the beach; you must be tired and I may be able to work for a little while. I do want to have something to show Mrs. Burton as a result of our day."
On the beach the girls saw a little wooden hut with a huge kettle filled with boiling water standing before the door. Half a mile or more out in the ocean two Japanese fishermen were diving for the famous abalone shells, while on the sands a dozen of the shells, having been thoroughly cleansed, now lay drying in the sun; their inner surfaces of mother-of-pearl held all the colors of the dawn.