"VERE"

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16451, 13 June 1921, Page 2

"VERE"

OUR SERIAL.

By L. G. MOBERLY

CHAPTER X.—-Continued. “ I ought, not to worry at all,” sh© answered, “ when everybody is so good to me. Mr Trenton first, and then Mr and Mrs Garstairs. I couldn’t boro been luckier or have had better friends : and J am sorry that when they do so much for mo, J can’t help them by remembering anything about myself. ’’ “ I don't expect they’re reckoning that: up against you/’ Burnaud said gaily, ‘ and I rather fancy the more you worry your memory the less it will do what you want it to do. Leave it alone and it’ll come home like little 80-Peep’s sheep. Meanwhile,’’ lie paused, and again his glance rested upon her with deep admiration, “ meanwhile I should like to ask you a tremendous favour, only you’ll probably think me a most cheeky beast lor ever suggesting it. But—l wish you would let me paint you.” “ Paint me?” '*Yes—-T want to paint you dressed in apricot colour with a great sheaf of daffodils in your arms, j want to call the picture ‘ Spring Comes.’ and you will b© just stepping out of a. ha&el cops© where there is the faintest veil of green upon the trees, and the bluebells are still in bud, and anemones and dog violets swinging in the sunlight amongst the primroses, and a brown carpet of last year's leaves. You will let mo paint you exactly like that, won’t you P” The colour flew over Then’s face. Sho laughed with a shade of embarrassment, and her eyes turned to Raymond, who was disagreeably surprised to detect in his own soul a sudden twinge of distaste—or could it be jealousy? The very thought brought with it a revulsion of—annoyance, and a, strong desire to call himself an arrant ass: and the very annoyance, made him more ready to fall in with Burnand’s suggestion than lie would normally have been. “If it can anyhow be arranged I see no reason why you should riot sit to Mr Buruand,’’ he said, in reply to the - unspoken question in Theo’s eyes, ‘‘ just at the moment it could not be managed because you arc going to Chedmoutli. But later on it ought surely to be possible to arrange something 1” “Ob! it has got to be possible to arrange something,” Buruand said earnestly, his eyes still scanning Theo’s face, not rudely, but with profound and open admiration, “you see : a picture such as T want to paint must not ho lost to the world. Doesn’t that sound conceited and ridiculous?” His earnest, tones changed to those of gnv amusement, “you will go away with the impression that T am suffering from a severe attack of swelled head. But I wasn't thinking of the picture from the artist’s point of view, only from the standpoint of the public who ought to see it. wild the sitter who ought- to be seen.” No one could have taken offence at

his words, outspoken though they were. Tbeir simplicity and sincerity were so patent that they could only be received as simply and sincerely as tbev were littered. “Of course if you could sit to me in spring-time it would really be best.” Bumand continued, “then we should have real daffodils and primroses, and up on the hill behind this house there is a copse with a carpet of bluebells, and if our blackbirds sing to vou as they know how to sing, thev will Wing exactly the spring-time look into your, face.” CHAPTER XT. AT AUNT MAISIE’S. Miss Somers lived in a white house rather above the little seaside town of Chedmoutli, and from the low wall of her garden you could look down upon the town’s grey roofs and small gardens, and over the harbour in which the brown-sailed fishing vessels lay, to the open sea beyond. The situation of Miss Somers’s house rather typified the attitude Miss Somers herself adopted towards the town and its inhabitants, for undoubtedly she considered that she was in some kind of undefined way their guardian and mentor ; and if she had been self-appointed to tiles© posts, that made no difference to the fact that in. her opinion Chedmoutli ..was hers to command!

“ Aunt Maisie is no more like mother than a gramophone is like the best kind of violin,” Babs had said to Theo, as the two girls journeyed to Chedmoutli, “ she is a born autocrat, and mother is a top-hole democrat of the most superlative kind. Aunt Maisie really ought never to have lived till now, she is too prehistoric. She stopped developing some time in the Victorian age, and she has never gone on at all.” Theo, by this time accustomed to the whimsical fashion in which Babs dealt with most things, took her remarks—as she told her in plain English—with a very large number of grain's of salt. But Babs only shook her head, laughed, and responded : “ Wait and see! Aunt Maisie is her own best Notes and Commentaries.” And Theo. on the first everting of her stay with Miss Somers, was fain to confess that Babs had not been guilty of exaggeration. Miss Sonlers was many years older than Margaret Garstairs, and, whereas the latter had retained her spirit of youth, or perhaps, to put it more correctly, had travelled on with the times, her eldest sister had ‘ travelled nowhere beyond the days of a rather remote past. In the course of years she had grown set and stiff in her own narrow groove of thought; she eyed the rising generation with suspicion and intolerant disapproval ; and Baba, her youngest niece, was entirely outside the pale of her understanding. The only explanation she could offer for that young person was to say that she had been thoroughly spoilt; but at the back of her mincl even Miss Somers herself was obliged to own that this apology for Babs’s “ways” did not entirely meet the case. In Theo she was presented to an entirely new aspect of the human young woman, and, although she would have died rather than give to the reflection, Aunt Maisie neverthelss reflected tfiat she had never before met anyone in the least like her sister’s protegee, and that, furthermore, she did not quite know where to place her in the category of young women she stored in her mind! During the evening , meal she cast sundry furtive glances at the lovely face with its crown of burnished hair, hair which she definitely decided was of a most dangerous colour! But the girl’s quiet ease of manner, and unruffled demeanour, gave her hostess a feeling of annoyance. She told herself that girls nowadays were very self-contained and independent: none of the modesty and diffiaence of the girl in her youth! Babe caught sight of more than one of her aunt's glances towards Theo, and her eyes twinkled as her shrewd little brain followed the Tine of Miss Somers’s thoughts, but she said nothing until later when Theo had gone up to her rqdm, and she apd Miss Somers were alone. (To be continued.)