Miss Aubrey, who had lived many years at Heathwell, had a score of rustic acquaintances. The cottage folk often sat to her as models. Their quaint ways and ingenuous remarks opened out a new phase of the world to Katrine. She became immensely interested in the villagers, from Abel Barnes, who still urged the claims of his bow-windowed red-brick villa as a subject for her brush, to bonny little Hugh Gartley, whose cherubic beauty she vainly tried to transfer to canvas. She found the Gartleys a fascinating family. There were so many of them, and they were all so fair and flaxen-haired, with such ready smiles and winning manners. How they contrived to fit into their very small cottage Katrine could never imagine. She had spoken once or twice to the mother, a good-natured, untidy, slatternly young woman, whose income never seemed to run to soap; but she avoided the father, an idle ne'er-do-weel with a reputation for poaching. "It is very difficult to help the Gartleys," said Miss Aubrey. "The children are most attractive, but it is simply encouraging pauperism to give to them while Bob Gartley stays at home drinking and refusing to work. I hope you haven't given them any money?" "Only a few pennies to Hugh and Mary--they looked so pretty," admitted Katrine guiltily. CHAPTER VI An Awkward Predicament For some days Katrine had been convinced that there was another artist in the neighbourhood. She had caught a glimpse of an easel fixed in a field, she had found a tube of paint lying in the road, and had noticed upon a paling the scrapings of a palette. She had not yet, however, been vouchsafed a sight of the stranger, against whom she had conceived a violent prejudice. She had come to regard Heathwell as the private sketching property of herself and Miss Aubrey, and regarded the new-comer in the light of a poacher on their art preserves. He or she--she did not even know the sex of the intruder--might very well have chosen some other village, in her opinion, instead of fixing upon this particular Paradise. All the same, she was inquisitive, and would have liked very much to see the unknown artist's work. One afternoon Miss Aubrey took the Marsdens to a little subject in a meadow on the road to the river. She watched them begin to draw in a picturesque railing and hawthorn stump, then went herself to another position in the field. Left alone, the girls worked for some time in silence, Katrine with whole-hearted absorption, and Gwethyn in a more dilettante fashion. The latter did not care to stick at things too long. She soon grew tired, and threw down her brush. "Ugh! It makes me stiff to sit so still. I'm going to walk round the pasture. Do come, Katrine! Oh, how you swat! You might take two minutes' rest. We're just above the road here, and I believe somebody's sitting down below. I can smell tobacco. I'm going to investigate." Gwethyn came back in a few moments with her eyes dancing.