Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/90

76 that she had begun her preparations for dinner a little too early.

Just then an impatient rat-a-tat-tat sounded on her ceiling, as if some one was knocking on the floor above with a stick.

Amy rushed out into the little hall, and up the stairs. In the large, rather pleasant front chamber sat an elderly woman in a steamer-chair, with her eyes shaded by a dark-green shade.

“Where is your mother?” she asked fretfully, as Amy entered the room. Amy hesitated a moment.

“She has gone out to sketch,” she said at length, with a little sigh.

“There it is,” replied the older woman; “always sketching, sketching, as if anything could come from that. Why does n’t she sit down and work at her miniatures. People sometimes make a little money by painting miniatures. But sketches! who ever heard of any one’s selling a sketch from nature in these days.”

“There’s no sense,” said Amy, rather crossly, “in painting miniatures that no one will buy. Mother has several ideal heads that she would sell now, if she could,  but nobody wants them. She’s painted me from life, and Fritz from life, and one of the little Murphy children  down the road, but they ’re all up there in her room. I can’t see that there has been any great demand for them. She enjoys sketching from nature, and I’m glad that she has gone up in the woods now—the house is very stuffy.”

“Humph!” said the older woman, with a shrug of her