Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/210

194 was always consoling to her, because in her search for words to rhyme, or to perfect the metre, she usually forgot her  grievances, even though the particular subject of the poem  might be something far from cheerful.

To-day, however, she was not to have an opportunity either to repine any longer, or to write a poem. “Amy,” said her mother, coming into the room, “I wish that you would come up to the studio to sit for me. I am making a small color sketch, and you are just the model  I need.”

So Amy, seated on the little three-cornered stool on which her mother placed her, with her hair falling over her shoulders, and her sleeves rolled up to the elbow,  made a docile model, and showed no signs of weariness,  even when she had been there for some time.

“Amy,” said her mother, for neither model nor artist was obliged to keep silent. “Amy, is n’t it two or three days since Fritz has been here?”

“Yes, I think that it is,” responded Amy.

“He hasn’t been here since the day you went to Marblehead.”

“No, ’m, he has n’t been. You know we saw him at Marblehead, over there by the Fort. He was on his new wheel.”

“Perhaps the new bicycle accounts for his not having been here. I suppose that he’s very busy using it.”

“Oh, it would be all the easier for him to come over; why, he’d be here in a second, almost,” said Amy.