It was nice to be praised and Cynthia felt herself getting warm and pink cheeked. Yes, she knew Nono had been her best effort ... to date. “There’ll be better ones, though,” she told the little editor. “I’m going to Brittany next week to join the Brewsters, and to paint. I’ll do you a Breton child for the issue after this one.” Mr. Culbert got up and took her arm. “Now we’ll go and get a check made out for this. I know you can always use money in Paris. And then how about a celebration dinner tonight, some place where they have marvelous French cooking?” Cynthia laughed. “I can do better than that, I’ve got an invitation for you, instead. We’re both invited to a really American meal. Please, _do_ you like corned beef hash?” CHAPTER 3 _Brittany_ COLD-IN-THE-HEAD Nancy’s rapid, fluent French gave directions to the small, sabot shod boy who dragged behind him a blue painted hand cart. Then she turned to bestow an additional hug on the waiting Cynthia. “Oh, but it is grand to see you. And how brown you will get here! Come along. François’ll bring your luggage in his perambulator.” Cynthia drew a deep whiff of the ocean scented air. “Ouff! ’S nice to get on solid ground again. I feel inches deep in train dirt and trolley dust. How sweet the air smells, Nancy.” “You’ll see the broad Atlantic in a moment or two, just over that way a few blocks. We have to walk about a half mile to the bathing beach, but it’s a beauty when you get there.” Cynthia gave a little skip of delight. “How’s your especially nice parent?” she asked. “She’s always lovely. At the moment she’s in a seventh heaven, having donned a disreputable paint-smeared smock, stuck an old straw hat on her head, and is painting ocean foam and wet rocks, laying the color on the canvas with a trowel! She’s awfully glad to be free of the illustration business for a time, if you ask me. But you’ll see her soon. She gets hungry and comes home to meals.” Nancy babbled on and Cynthia had a chance to see how brown and strong she looked, how much good the summer in this tiny provincial town was doing her. “We turn here, to the right. This, ladieeze and gen’lemen, is the main and principal street of Le Conquet, the most wester-r-r-n town in all France. Sweet, isn’t it, Cindy?” It was, Cynthia admitted, adorable. Old and gray and cobblepaved, with a tiny, one-pedestrian sidewalk along one wall, and with little two- and three-story houses of old, pearly-gray stone whose tiny windows opened intimately close to the street, as did the heavy wooden doors. Green lichened roofs sloped steeply, and there were red geraniums blooming in open windows between blowing red and green checked curtains, to give color to the mellow softness of the ancient stone. “Our American hero, Mr. Jones, used to put in here, they say,” remarked Nancy casually. “What Mr. Jones?” asked Cynthia, then at Nancy’s deepening dimple, always an index to her mood, suspected a trap. “Who was Mr. Jones?”