f 'me' in the picture--enough to cock-a-doodle about. The
Castletons have been painted so often, they don't care; but it's a
unique experience for me. It makes me feel somehow as if _I_ were
Kilmeny, and had spent those seven long years among the fairies. I felt
it all the time I was standing for you, Carina."

"That's where you made such a perfect model. I could see the glamour of
the fairies in your face, and tried to catch it in my painting. I always
contend that one of the chief elements in a good sitter is imagination,
so as to maintain the right expression. One sees many apathetic
portraits, and knows that the originals must have been feeling bored to
tears. You never looked bored."

"No, the fairies were dancing round me all the time! You conjured them
up. Do you know, Carina, I think fairies are your forte? I like those
small paintings of them better than anything else you do."

"Those coloured frontispieces for children's magazines? They're
certainly the only things in which I've ever succeeded. It's well to
realize one's limitations. I've been so ambitious in my time, and wanted
to paint historic scenes and battle-pieces, and other things quite
beyond my powers. It's strange if the line we rather despise turns out
to be our best bit of work. Look at Edward Lear. He was a rather
classically inclined artist, whose serious work seems to have vanished,
yet he is known and appreciated all over the world by the delightful and
inimitable _Book of Nonsense_ that he knocked off in a few leisure hours
to amuse the children of a noble family whose portraits he was painting.
Hans Andersen, too, is another instance. No one ever now reads his
numerous novels and solid books, but his fairy-tales have been
translated into almost every language. Nothing so charming and poetical
has ever been written. His is a magic flute that draws children of every
clime and age to listen to him. Not that I'm for a moment comparing
myself to Edward Lear or Hans Andersen! All the same, I think I shall
take a hammer and smash up those statues I was trying my hand at, and
stick to fairies for the future."

"I hope they'll hang 'Kilmeny' on the line!"

"So do I, but I don't expect it. It will be most exciting to go up to
town and see it. I wonder----"

"You wonder what?" asked Lorraine, for Margaret had suddenly stopped
short.

"Never mind! It was an idea that came into my head. Perhaps I'll tell
you some other time."

"Oh, do tell me n