Youth and natural joy possessed her.
What scents from the river-bank, under the softly breathing wind which
had sprung up with the sunset! The girl brought her eyes down, and saw a
bank of primroses, and beyond, in the little copse on the farther side of
the stream, a gleam of blue, where the wild hyacinth spread among the
birches. While close to her, at her very feet, ran the stream, with its
slipping, murmuring water, its stones splashed with white, purple, and
orange, its still reaches paved with evening gold.
"What a mercy I wrote that letter!" she said to herself, with a sigh of
content. She was thinking of a proposal that had come to her a few days
before this date, to take a post as drawing mistress in a Brighton
school. The salary was tempting; and, at the moment, money was more than
usually scarce in the family purse. Her mother's eyes had looked at her
wistfully.
Yet she had refused; with a laughing bravado that had concealed some
inward qualms.
Whereupon the gods had immediately and scandalously rewarded her. She had
sold four of her drawings at a Liverpool exhibition for twenty pounds;
and there were lying beside her on the grass some agreeable press
notices just arrived, most of which she already knew by heart.
Twenty pounds! That would pay the half year's rent. And there were
three other drawings in a London show that might very well sell too. Why
not--now the others had sold? Meanwhile she--thank the Lord!--had saved
herself, as a fish from the hook.
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