of course! How could I be so stupid as to forget it?
It's no good taking pencils and paints if I've nothing to draw upon!"

"Hello, Aldred! What a spread!" exclaimed Keith, rousing himself from
the luxuries of a comfortable chair and an absorbing book to notice that
his sister had put on her hat, that her gloves lay on a chair, and that
she was already beginning to pack some of the articles in question
inside a home-made portfolio of dark-green American cloth. "The table
looks like an art repository!" he continued. "Have you suddenly turned
into a Rubens, or a Raphael? Where are you going with all those traps?"

Aldred paused to count her paint brushes, fitted the spare tube of
Chinese white into a vacant corner of her paint-box, and slipped the
penknife into her pocket.

"I want to make a sketch of old Mrs. Barker's cottage," she replied.
"The clematis is out over the porch, and it looks lovely. I heard Mr.
Bowden say yesterday that it was a splendid subject. Don't you remember,
he made a picture of it last year?"

"So he did, and a jolly good one too. Yours won't be anything like up to
that, Sis!"

"I dare say not, but you needn't discourage me from trying, at any
rate."

"Oh, I'm not discouraging you. Go by all means, and good luck to your
efforts! You can show me the masterpiece when you come back;" and the
boy, flinging his legs over one arm of the chair, settled himself in an
even more inelegant and reposeful attitude than before, and plunged
again into the fascinating adventures of Captain Kettle.

That, however, did not at all content his sister.

"I thought you were coming with me," she said reproachfully. "I was
counting upon you to hold my water tin while I painted."

Keith detached his mind from tropical Africa with an effort.

"Then you counted without your host, my dear girl!" he responded. "I'm
extremely comfortable here, and I assure you I haven't the smallest
intention of pounding half a mile down the dusty road, on a baking
afternoon, to look at a picturesque cottage and act water-carrier when I
get there!"

"The tin upsets when I hold it on my paint-box," said Aldred, in a
rather aggrieved voice, "and if I put it on the ground I have to stoop
every time I want to dip my brush."

"Then make a hole in each side, tie a piece of string across, and hang
it on the peg of your easel. I'll fix it up for you in half a second, if
you'll find me the hammer and a nail. Girls have no invention! The