So Cynthia settled down contentedly on the old Basque farm. It was two miles through the hot sunlight to the nearest village but she found plenty to paint within easy walking distance of the Marge house; nearby houses with their Spanish iron balconies overhung with roses and vines; the sturdy Basque farmers at work in the fields, and their great cream colored oxen that paced so slowly along the road. The houses were white with steep roofs and wide eaves of deep gray and heavy shutters painted green, and the vines, sprayed with arsenic green made rich shadow patterns on the old walls. Then she found an old stone church with the three-peaked tower so characteristic of Basque village churches and beneath its porch an iron grill to discourage the pigs from entering the place of worship. She peeped through the stone doorways where the lintels bore blurred dates of the early seventeenth century, to peer into the dim, dark timbered kitchens on whose table-high hearthstones a tiny fire of twigs burned beneath the black kettle on a crane. With many of the women she had a pleasant nodding and smiling acquaintance, but she spoke no word of their language and found that her French was not understood. Besides, these people seemed unusually reserved. She could establish no contact with them. Cynthia began to suspect that Monsieur Marge was in a similar position and was very lonely because of it. He had lived so long in America that he had lost touch with these, his own people, and when he had returned to them found that they considered him a foreigner. He was now neither Basque nor American. It was a valley of enchantment hidden between the high snow capped peaks of the Pyrénées. Each day was as clear-skied, as sunny and warm as the one before it and Cynthia woke each morning in her fairytale bed to look forward to another bright morning of painting, another sleepy afternoon of sketching. Still, she reminded herself after a week of this, she wasn’t getting any further with her job for the month. She had come down here to do a Basque cover for the _Little Ones’ Magazine_. Somewhere she must find herself a model. Her second week in the Basque country had started. Monday slipped by, Tuesday evening she sat, as usual on the doorstep after a late dinner. Monsieur Marge smoked placidly, Madame knitted in the half dark of the vine-hung verandah. There was a sound of cattle bells far down the smooth winding road and the mountains leaned, purple dark, against the sunset. Cynthia and the old man had been comparing their memories of old songs. Astonishing how many of the old ones, the really old ones that belonged to mother’s, even to grandmother’s day, he remembered from his years in America. There was “Sweet Marie” and “Sweet Rosey O’Grady,” and “Sidewalks of New York.” “Oh yes, they sing that still,” cried Cynthia and whistled it with him. Madame hummed and smiled placidly while her fingers seemed to twinkle in time to the gay little tune.