"Would you please come in," Elizabeth continued. "I'm not busy at present. The children and I have just finished making some toffee. I promised them last week that we should make some to-day."
"If they were very good, I suppose?" Pamela smiled down at the six little Baggs, who were standing round, gazing with open-mouthed interest at her.
"No," replied Elizabeth, to Pamela's surprise; "I had promised it them in any case."
"It smells delicious, anyway," said Pamela, not knowing quite what to reply.
"Would you like some when it's cool?" asked the little Bagg girl, who was least shy and most generous.
"If you can spare a little bit—yes, I would," laughed Pamela.
"The nutty kind—or the un-nutty kind?" anxiously inquired the elder Bagg boy, in a thick voice. He was rather greedy, and hoped Pamela would say the un-nutty, as he liked the nutty sort best himself. Fortunately she did choose the kind he liked least, and he eyed her with more favour than he had hitherto done.
The eldest of the children, a girl, was about eleven years old, and the youngest was about five. There were four girls and two boys, and Pamela noticed that they were all dressed in sensible linen overalls—things that were strongly made and easily washed. The children seemed to be a healthy, noisy, happy-go-lucky little crowd; but although Pamela was fond of children, she did not pay so much attention to the six little Baggs on this first visit as she did on subsequent occasions. Her attention was centred on their aunt, and her pictures.
While Elizabeth Bagg took Pamela upstairs to her 'studio' the little Baggs disappeared into the kitchen to watch the toffee cooling, and with permission to break some of the toffee that had already set into small pieces; during which operation long and excited arguments seemed to occur with great frequency—arguments that more often than not ended in a scream or a howl. Hearing which, Elizabeth Bagg would put down the picture she was showing Pamela, and with a muttered apology would vanish downstairs, and restore peace.
Elizabeth Bagg's 'studio' was really her bedroom, but in the daytime, when the camp-bedstead was covered with a piece of flowered chintz, and the rest of the bedroom furniture made as inconspicuous as possible, the room served very well as a workroom. The walls were whitewashed, making a good background for Elizabeth's pictures, which were hung thickly all around. A few had frames—but only a few. Most of them were without. She seemed to do all kinds of subjects, from landscapes to quaint studies of children, painted in a bold, unusual style. On an easel by the window stood Elizabeth's latest study, half finished; Pamela was surprised to see that it was a painting of the old windmill that she herself had tried to sketch. As Pamela stood looking at it, she realized that there was something in Elizabeth Bagg's work that she herself would never be able to get. "I'm only a dabbler," thought Pamela to herself. "This is the real thing."