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“You don’t know how much it hurt me,” said Loveday, returning quite calmly to the mixing of her paints, her short golden curls falling all about her little flushed face. “It was—oh, it was somefin’ dreadful!”

“It couldn’t have been so very bad, or you would have screamed, I know;” and with this parting shot Priscilla walked away.

“Aren’t you going to watch me paint?” called Loveday anxiously.

“No, I am not,” said Priscilla shortly. She was feeling cross and dissatisfied, and she knew she was behaving unkindly, which did not help her to feel happier. Geoffrey had disappeared since he brought back the paint-box, and Priscilla felt dull and miserable; she could not think of anything she wanted to do. First of all she wandered up to the nursery, but it looked lonely, so she quickly came out again, and, strolling downstairs, went out into the yard.

The afternoon sun was shining hotly, right down into the yard, bringing out the beautiful scents of the mignonette and lemon-verbena in the box on the kitchen window-sill, and the aromatic smell of the scenty-leaved geranium. On the ground underneath the window stood several very large fuchsias in pots; their branches hung thickly with pendent graceful blossoms like little dancers, some in pink frocks with white petticoats, others in white frocks with pink petticoats, while others, again, had scarlet frocks with purple petticoats.