looked at her in astonishment.

"It takes brains too for this kind of work, I can tell you," she
remarked. "You have to have all your wits about you, or you make silly
mistakes and spoil things."

"I only wish I'd the chance to try," said Lesbia.

But at that moment Miss Joyce returned. She came bustling in, with a
little paper bag in her hand, surprised to see Lesbia, but very kind
about it.

"You must stay and have tea," she declared hospitably. "I've just been
out for some buns. Sybil, is the kettle boiling? We always make
ourselves tea about this time."

The kettle on the gas-ring was almost boiling over. The pupils put down
their tools and helped to set out the pale-yellow tea-service. There was
a pot of striped purple crocuses on the tea-table, and a big jar of
sallow "palm" and hazel catkins standing upon the floor. The March
sunshine, flooding through a diamond-paned window, lighted up a blue
vase full of Lent lilies. Lesbia, sinking into a basket-chair--the room
had so many comfortable chairs--enjoyed her tasteful surroundings with
the art-hunger of one whose aesthetic cravings have been systematically
starved.

Miss Joyce was very sympathetic about the scrap album. She rocked gently
to and fro, balancing her tea-cup in her hand.

"I can see your cover," she said, staring so fixedly at the ceiling that
Lesbia instinctively looked there too. "It doesn't want realistic roses
painted on it, but a decorative pattern. Don't put too much of it
either. A design should never be overdone. My advice is, adapt your
lotus pattern to it. It's far and away the best thing you've produced
yet, and you may just as well use it. Put a piece at the top and a
piece at the bottom, then in the middle paint a misty and rather
impressionistic sketch of those old houses at the bottom of Mill
Street--you can copy them from a photo--then bring your lettering right
across your sketch. It ought to be very effective."

"Why, so it would. I can almost see it," agreed Lesbia, with her eye on
the carved boss that ornamented one of the beams of the studio roof.
"I'll make a rough drawing of it to-night, on a piece of paper. May I
bring it to school to show you before I begin to do it on the proper
cardboard?"

"Of course. I'll criticize it with pleasure. Now about this scrap album,
is it entirely confined to antiquarian things? Why don't you put in a
list of wild flowers found in the neighbourhood? And any nature notes
you can?"