Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/151

Rh “But the stain of the strawberry hangs o’er me still.”

“That sounded like poetry,” said Julia. “Are you a poet, as well as a housekeeper?” Julia was two years  older than Amy, and there may have seemed to be just  the least tinge of patronage, or older girlishness in her  voice. Whatever it was, it caused Amy to answer a rather curt “No,” and made the other girls exchange glances. Amy herself was almost immediately ashamed of her momentary petulance. How often had her mother warned her that she must curb her quick temper, and here she  was ready to flare up at—why, at nothing! As amends for this, she now made great efforts to entertain her  guests. She showed them a portfolio containing her mother’s watercolor sketches of wild flowers; and when  the girls expressed their admiration, she added, “Mother  does n’t like to do flower and nature sketches.”

“Oh, I should think she’d be just crazy to; why these flowers are just perfect! ” Brenda’s admiration was very genuine.

“Perhaps there is something else that she does even better,” suggested Julia.

“Well, I think that her portraits are better; she can make the funniest little sketches of people. Sometime, perhaps, she ’ll let me show you some that she has done. Those are miniatures of hers on the mantelpiece.”

Again came a series of “ohs” and “ahs” of admiration from the girls.

“Don’t say it is n’t like me,” cried Amy, as Brenda and Nora bent over one of them. “I know that I am idealized