t; but yet she
could and did, getting up promptly. She had designs for magazine covers
and designs for war posters and designs for mural decorations and designs
for oil paintings and so forth--"studies; crude, unfinished bits" she
called 'em, but in a tone that didn't urge any one else to call 'em that.

It was mostly clouds and figures of females, some with ladies' wearing
apparel and many not, engaged in dancing or plucking fruit or doing up
their hair. Quite different stuff from Metta's innocent pictures of
kittens and grapes and daffodils. After everyone was put on the easel
Henrietta Templeton Price would stick her thumb up in the air and sight
across it with one eye shut and say "A stunning bit, that!" and the
others would gasp with delight and mutter to each other about its being
simply wonderful.

Vernabelle listened in an all-too-negligent manner, putting in a tired
word or two now and then. She admitted that one or two was by way of
being precious bits. "Rather precious in an elemental way," she would
say. "Of course I am trying to develop the psychology of the line."
Everyone said "Oh, of course!"

While she had one up showing part of a mottled nude lady who was smiling
and reaching one hand up over to about where her shoulder blades would
meet in the back, who should be let in on the scene but Lon Price and
Cousin Egbert Floud. Lon had called for Henrietta, and Cousin Egbert had
trailed along, I suppose, with glass blowing in mind. Vernabelle forgot
her picture and fluttered about the two new men. I guess Lon Price is a
natural-born Bohemian. He took to her at once.

"Sit here and tell me all about yourself," says Vernabelle, and Lon did
so while the girl hung breathless on his words. In no time at all he was
telling her about Price's Addition to Red Gap, how you walk ten blocks
and save ten dollars a block and your rent money buys a home in this,
the choicest villa site on God's green earth. Vernabelle had sort of kept
hold of Cousin Egbert's sleeve with an absent hand--that girl was a man
hound if ever there was one--and pretty soon she turned from Lon to
Egbert and told him also to tell her all about himself.

Cousin Egbert wasn't so glib as Lon. He looked nervous. He'd come
expecting a little glass blowing and here was something strange. He
didn't seem to be able to tell her all about himself. He couldn't start
good.

"Tell me what you are reading, then," says Vernabelle; and Cousin Egbert
kind of