The Forest Lover Read Online Free Page A

to what we’re here for.”
    She let them work on their own until mistakes began to appear. “You have to define the elbow, not let it slide down the arm and melt away,” she told Priscilla.
    Priscilla’s head popped up. The flamingo on her head jiggled, as though it were about to flap skyward.
    â€œYou may gaze at my work all you want, but I do not care to hear your criticisms.”
    â€œIf I’m not mistaken, that’s what you hired me for.”
    Emily turned to someone else. “Work the line from your forearm instead of your fingers. Working from your fingers makes your drawing too tight.”
    â€œI happen to like tight work.”
    Emily glimpsed Priscilla’s mouth twitch upward. Sweet Jesus! Was this some conspiracy? Hold your tongue, she told herself. These butterflies with sketch pads are paying your rent.
    â€œCan you tell me please what’s wrong with this hand?”
    All eyes shot across to Jessica Howard. Emily couldn’t control her smug smile. Jessica, the outsider, an American. Teacups clinked in saucers.
    â€œLook at your own hand, Jessica. How long are the fingers in relation to the palm?”
    Jessica examined her hand, then her drawing, and looked up bright-eyed. “I made the fingers too short, didn’t I?”
    â€œYou’ll get it eventually. It’s a matter of training your eye to measure one part against another.”
    All afternoon she itched to get home to paint for herself, but Jessica asked to go with her to pick out a sketching site for the nextoutdoor lesson. She was the only person in Vancouver she could call a friend. Taking a walk with someone didn’t happen often. She said yes.
    They followed the plank boardwalk of West Hastings Street past the packing houses and Klondike outfitters to get to the wharves. Emily rolled a cigarette from her tobacco tin and blew an agitated puff skyward.
    â€œDilettantes. What do they expect? Only the goo of praise?”
    â€œLet them talk. They’ll never be artists—not like you.” Admiration glistened in Jessica’s eyes.
    â€œThey pay more attention to the way they hold their teacups than the way they hold their brushes,” Emily said.
    â€œWhat? Don’t tell me you think they’re serious about art.”
    â€œHumph. Priscilla and her phony Knightsbridge accent posturing with that flamingo on her head. Now if she’d worn a hat with ferns or crow feathers, at least that would show she knew where she was.” She was pleased when Jessica laughed.
    They left muddy Cordova Street at Water Street, and walked quickly past saloons, tobacco shops, peep show wagons, bawdy houses, and Indian prostitutes, to get to Burrard Inlet. At the Union Steamship dock, they bought clam soup from an old Chinese woman tending a brazier. Under a paper parasol her grateful smile showed brown teeth. Fish smells from the packing houses mixed with the aroma of wet wood shavings from Hastings Sawmill shrilly chewing up a grove of cedars, spitting them out in planks. She grunted. Progress, Father would say. Colonialism, she’d say. While Victoria strove to be more English than London, Vancouver was busy being the Liverpool of the Pacific.
    A log boom made herringbone patterns on the water, the same pattern as on the tooled platform in the hut. Was that what Lulu had meant by everything is one?
    â€œNow that log boom is a possibility, with that three-master in the mid-ground, forest and mountains in the distance.”
    â€œMm, too industrial for their tastes,” Jessica said.
    â€œBut that’s what buys their trips to the Ascot races.”
    At the Canadian Pacific Railway dock, an Empress liner rode high in the water. Emily stopped.
    â€œWhooh, wouldn’t you give a tooth to go north in a ship likethat? My father did. I begged him to take me. He said that was inviting trouble. He left England for adventure, but denied it to his family.”
    â€œWhy