"It's an artist!" she whispered. "He's painting in the road exactly below us. I can see his picture through the hedge. Come and look!" Such exciting information broke the spell of Katrine's work. She put down her palette at once, and followed Gwethyn. It was impossible to resist taking a peep at the interesting stranger's sketch. "You must promise not even to breathe. I should be most annoyed if he happened to see us," she declared. "All right! I'll be mum as a mouse, and walk as softly as a pussy-cat. I'll undertake it won't be my fault if he divines our existence." Very gently the two girls crept along the edge of the pasture, trying not to rustle the grass, and heroically refraining from conversation. "Here we are!" signalled Gwethyn at last, pausing at a thin place in the hedge, which might have been made on purpose for a peep-hole. Through a frame of sycamore leaves they could peer into the road exactly at the spot where the rival easel was pitched. The artist's back was towards them; they could see nothing but his tweed suit, his grey hair under a brown hat, and the skilful right hand which kept dabbing subtle combinations of half-tones upon his canvas. He seemed utterly unconscious of their presence, and worked away in sublime ignorance that two pairs of eyes were following every stroke of his brush. He was no amateur, that was plain. The girls were sufficient judges of painting to recognize that though the sketch was still at an elementary stage he had made a masterly beginning. Katrine watched quite fascinated, trying to decide what colours he was using, and in what proportion he had mixed them. If she could only see his palette, she might perhaps discover the secret of that particularly warm shadow he was in the act of placing under the near tree. She craned her head a little forward through the hedge. Gwethyn, equally anxious to see everything possible, pressed closely behind her. Whether it was the heat of the sun, or whether a sycamore leaf tickled the end of her nose, I cannot tell. The cause is immaterial, but the awful and tangible result was that Katrine--Katrine, who prided herself upon prunes and prism--burst without warning into a violent and uncontrollable sneeze! Naturally the artist turned at the unwonted sound, to catch an astonishing vision of two dismayed faces peeping like dryads from the greenery behind him. Katrine dashed off like a thief detected red-handed, but she had hardly gone a yard when Gwethyn seized her by the arm. "Katrine! Stop! There's no need to run in that silly way. Can't you see it's Mr. Freeman?" "What's the matter, girls?" asked Miss Aubrey, who had walked up to correct their drawings. Katrine felt caught on both sides, but there seemed nothing for it but to pass off the affair as well as she could. "We've met an old friend of my father's," she explained. "I suppose we may say 'How do you do?' to him over the hedge?"