Charity Biglow looked at them solemnly. "So
obedient," she observed; "just like a child."
"Are you an artist, too?" Ricky asked as she put down her glass.
Miss Biglow's face wrinkled into a grimace. "My critics say not. I
manage to provide daily bread and sometimes a slice of cake by doing
illustrations for action stories. And then once in a while I labor for
the good of my soul and try to produce something my more charitable
friends advise me to send to a show."
"May--may we see some of them--the pictures, I mean?" inquired Ricky
timidly.
"If you can bear it. I use the side balcony for a workshop in this kind
of weather. I'm working on a picture now, something more ambitious than
I usually attempt in heat of this sort. But my model didn't show up this
morning so I'm at a loose end."
She led them around the corner where Satan had disappeared and pointed
to a table with a sketching board at one end, several canvases leaning
face against the house, and an easel covered with a clean strip of
linen. "My workshop. A trifle untidy, but then I am an untidy person.
I'm expecting an order so I'm just whiling away my time working on an
idea of my own until it comes."
Ricky touched the strip of covering across the canvas on the easel. "May
I?" she asked.
"Yes. It might be a help, getting some other person's reaction to the
thing. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do when I started but I
don't think it's turning out to be what I planned.
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