Ever since the Easter holidays at Tunbury, and her apprenticeship to Art in Mr. Stockton's studio, Lesbia had been hankering for an oil paint-box. She wanted it desperately, as any craftsman, with creative instinct, longs for the tools of his trade. She thought about it in bed at nights, when she lay awake, and in imagination squeezed the delightful tubes on to her palette and mixed subtle combinations of soft shades. There seemed, to her particular bent, so many more possibilities in oils than in water-colour. To be sure, her cheap little student's box had never given the latter medium a fair trial, but she considered the possession of even Winsor and Newton's best equipment of half-pans and sables could not compete with the satisfaction of dabbing solid masses of paint on a canvas with stiff hog-hair brushes. "I don't like finicking work," she decided. "Give me something strong and broad, that I can dash away at and go ahead with. I'd rather be an Impressionist than a Pre-Raphaelite any day. Scene-painting's more in my line than miniatures. Oh dear! I wish all the powers in earth and air would show me how to get a decent paint-box." She had approached Marion with a view to an exchange, but her friend shook a regretful head. "I'm fearfully sorry, Lesbia," she apologized. "I'd have let you have my box with pleasure, only you see Dad gave it to me as a Christmas present, and I don't think he'd like me to swop it. He wants me to take some lessons in flower-painting. And I have a camera already. I don't mean my own--that was broken six months ago--but Uncle Fred has lent me his, and it's a perfect beauty. I've got his developing-machine too." "Nothing doing then, I suppose," said Lesbia, turning ruefully away, and wishing she had never asked the favour.