developed by my labours.

"Has she got a water-pot?" asked Jack.

"She is sure to have," said I pointedly. "She always takes her own
materials with her."

"How fortunate for those who do not!" said Jack. "Now, Margery dear,
don't look sulky. I knew you wouldn't grudge me a bit of paper to get
into the 'Household Album' with. Come down into the ravine. You're as
white as a blank sheet of Whatman's hot-pressed water-colour paper!"

The increasing heat was really beginning to overpower me, but I refused
to leave my sketch. Jack pinned a large white pocket-handkerchief to my
shoulders--"to keep the sun from the spine"--and departed to the ravine.

By midday my outline was in. One is no good judge of one's own work,
but I think, on the whole, that it was a success.

It is always refreshing to complete a stage of anything. I began to feel
less hot and tired, as I passed a wash of clean water over my outline,
and laying it in the sun to dry, got out my colours and brushes.

As I did so, one of the little gusts of wind which had been an
unpleasant feature of this very fine day, and which, threatening a
change of weather, made us anxious to finish our sketches at a sitting,
came down the sandy road. In an instant the damp surface of my block
looked rough enough to strike matches on. But impatience is not my
besetting sin, and I had endured these little catastrophes before. I
waited for the block to dry before I brushed off the sand. I also waited
till the little beetle, who had crept into my sky, and was impeded in
his pace by my first wash, walked slowly down through all my distances,
and quitted the block by the gate in the foreground. This was partly
because I did not want to hurt him, and partly because a white cumulus
cloud is a bad part of your sketch to kill a black beetle on.

I washed over my paper once more, and holding it on my knee to dry just
as much and no more than was desirable, I looked my subject in the face
with a view to colour.

A long time passed. I had looked and looked again; I had washed in and
washed out; I had realized the difficulty of the subject without
flinching, and had tried hard to see and represent the colouring before
me, when Clement (having exhausted his water in a similar process) came
down the hill behind me, with a surly and sunburnt face, to replenish
his bottle at a wayside water-trough.

It was then that, as he said, he found me crying.

"It's not because it's difficult an