Then some one, who of course could not foresee the result, asked Arabella if she would show them some of her Canadian sketches.
Miss Kinnaird made no objection, and when, soon after the tea was cleared away, the easel she sent for had been set up in the shadow of the beech, she displayed on it several small canvases and water-color drawings.

There were vistas of snow mountains, stretches of frothing rivers, and colonnades of towering firs, until at last she laid a canvas on the easel.
"This," she said, "is, I think, the best figure drawing I ever did." Ida, leaning forward in her chair, felt the blood creep into her face.
There was no doubt that the sketch was striking.

It showed a man standing tensely poised, with a big, glinting ax in his hand.

He was lean and lithely muscular, and his face was brown and very grim; but the artist had succeeded in fixing in its expression the elusive but recognizable something which is born of restraint, clean living, and arduous physical toil.

It is to be seen in the eyes of those who, living in Spartan simplicity, make long marches with the dog-sledges in the Arctic frost, drive the logs down roaring rivers, or toil sixteen hours daily under a blazing sun in the western harvest field.
In all probability it was as plainly stamped on the honest countenance of many an unconsidered English Tommy who plodded doggedly forward with the relief columns across the dusty veldt.