goes fishing, and now and then he'll carry a gun. But he usually becomes meditative over a stream, and is generally looking somewhere else if anything gets up in front of his gun, so his performances don't amount to much." She laughed again, and then looked half-archly, half-inquisitively at me.
"I'm wondering what you do with yourself," she said.
"I? Oh! I paint a bit," I answered.
"So, sometimes, does my guardian," she remarked. "He calls it daubing, but they aren't bad. There are two of his works of art on that panel."
She pointed to two small water-colour sketches which, framed in gilt, hung in a recess near the hearth. I rose and looked at them. One was of the house, the other a view of the Cheviot. There was some feeling of performance in both.
"What do you think of them?" she asked. "Perhaps you're a swell hand at that sort of thing?"
"Very nice," I replied. "And interesting, to me. My reason for wandering round to-day was that I wanted to find a good subject. I
