asked Jeanette. “Now there’s a long and dreary tale,” said Amy. Seated on a camp stool in front of a portable easel, she was concentrating on a distant headland. “Ah,” she breathed, with satisfaction, when a faraway cliff face loomed forward, brightened by a patch of watery sunlight. “Just the highlight I need.” While Amy changed brushes and took up a new color, Jeanette, who was sketching her at work, paused to decide how much of the surrounding landscape she should include in her own picture. They had placed themselves on a hillside above a field where a man, a woman, and three children were harvesting grain. Below the harvesters, scrub brush dropped to the water’s edge with Amy’s headland out on the horizon. Pace Sonja, the scene was not all gray shoreline. “Is it just the way he sometimes takes Emily for granted, or the way he’s moody?” “Still on about Mr. Dolson, are you?”
