n't
like to be neglected. Come here, Cinders, and make your manners."

Replying to her invitation with an insolent flirt of his tail, Cinders,
whom Val continued obstinately to regard as "Satan," disappeared around
the corner of the balcony. Charity Biglow looked at them solemnly. "So
obedient," she observed; "just like a child."

"Are you an artist, too?" Ricky asked as she put down her glass.

Miss Biglow's face wrinkled into a grimace. "My critics say not. I
manage to provide daily bread and sometimes a slice of cake by doing
illustrations for action stories. And then once in a while I labor for
the good of my soul and try to produce something my more charitable
friends advise me to send to a show."

"May--may we see some of them--the pictures, I mean?" inquired Ricky
timidly.

"If you can bear it. I use the side balcony for a workshop in this kind
of weather. I'm working on a picture now, something more ambitious than
I usually attempt in heat of this sort. But my model didn't show up this
morning so I'm at a loose end."

She led them around the corner where Satan had disappeared and pointed
to a table with a sketching board at one end, several canvases leaning
face against the house, and an easel covered with a clean strip of
linen. "My workshop. A trifle untidy, but then I am an untidy person.
I'm expecting an order so I'm just whiling away my time working on an
idea of my own until it comes."

Ricky touched the strip of covering across the canvas on the easel. "May
I?" she asked.

"Yes. It might be a help, getting some other person's reaction to the
thing. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do when I started but I
don't think it's turning out to be what I planned."

Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas.

[Illustration: _Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas._]

"But that is he!" he exclaimed.

Charity Biglow turned to the boy. "And what do you mean--"

"That's the boy I found in the garden, Ricky!"

"Is it?" She stared, fascinated, at the lean brown face, the untidy
black hair, the bitter mouth, which their hostess had so skilfully
caught in her unfinished drawing.

"So you've met Jeems." Miss Biglow looked at Val thoughtfully. "And what
did you think of him?"

"It's rather--what did he think of me. He seemed to hate me. I don't
know why. All I ever said to him was 'Hello.'"

"Jeems is a queer person--"

"Sam says that he is none too honest," observed Rick