"You are not very romantic, love," she said to me one evening, when she had been making unusually large demands upon her imagination, to my considerable amusement, "and I don't think you will ever be equal to the greatest writers unless you cultivate that side of your nature. You know, love, you are rather practical and common-sense and all that sort of thing, and the men might not know how very nice you are." She came across and kissed me, hoping I did not mind her candour. "You see, love, I was always rather romantic myself, and I think I could help you a bit; though, of course, I am not clever like you. But I could just tell you what I think ought to be put in, and you could find suitable language for it.... Now you're laughing at me!" I believe she thought the hero had arrived when the Cynic turned up on Easter Monday. It was a truly beautiful day, typically April, except that the showers were wanting, and the much-abused clerk who controls the Weather Department must have been unusually complaisant when he crowded so many pleasing features into his holiday programme. Until the long shadows began to creep across the fields it was warm enough to sit out in the sunshine, whilst there was just sufficient "bite" in the air to make exercise agreeable. Every cottage garden had on its gala clothing and smiled a friendly welcome to the passer-by, and a sky that was almost really blue bent over a landscape of meadow, moor, and wood that was a perfect fantasy in every delicate shade of green. And the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air lifted up their voices in their several degrees of melody. It had been a glorious Easter Day, and perhaps on that account I had risen early on the Monday and gone out bareheaded to catch the Spirit of the Morning. Farmer Goodenough passed as I stood at the gate, and threw one of his hearty greetings over his shoulder without pausing in his walk. "Look out for customers to-day, Miss 'Olden! There'll be scores in t' village this afternoon from Broadbeck way." "But suppose I don't want them, Mr. Goodenough," I replied; "it's holiday to-day." "That 'ud be a sin," he shouted; "'make hay while t' sun shines,' as t' Owd Book says, holiday or no holiday." There was sense in this. Customers had so far been scarce enough, for I had been favoured with the patronage of only three paying sitters, although I had been established in business for eight months. My total takings from the portraiture branch had not totalled thirty shillings; and if my neighbours had not grown accustomed to it, the sign at the bottom of the garden must have appeared very ridiculous indeed. I therefore anticipated the arrival of excursionists with no little eager interest. Half a dozen houses in the village had got out brand new boards indicating that Teas were provided within, and I knew that from this date forward until the autumn a very brisk trade would be done on sunny Saturday afternoons and holidays.