Selina had a fit of the fidgets, bred of the unpromising weather, and, instead of settling down to something on her own account, must needs walk round and annoy us artists, intent on embodying our conceptions of the ideal. She had been looking over my shoulder some minutes before I knew of it; or I would have had a word or two to say upon the subject. “I suppose you call that thing a ship,” she remarked contemptuously. “Who ever heard of a pink ship? Hoo-hoo!” I stifled my wrath, knowing that in order to score properly it was necessary to keep a cool head. “There is a pink ship,” I observed with forced calmness, “lying in the toy-shop window now. You can go and look at it if you like. D'you suppose you know more about ships than the fellows who make 'em?” Selina, baffled for the moment, returned to the charge presently. “Those are funny things, too,” she observed. “S'pose they're meant to be trees. But they're BLUE.” “They ARE trees,” I replied with severity; “and they ARE blue. They've got to be blue, 'cos you stole my gamboge last week, so I can't mix up any green.” “DIDN'T steal your gamboge,” declared Selina, haughtily, edging away, however, in the direction of Harold. “And I wouldn't tell lies, either, if I was you, about a dirty little bit of gamboge.” I preserved a discreet silence. After all, I knew SHE knew she stole my gamboge. The moment Harold became conscious of Selina's stealthy approach, he dropped his pencil and flung himself flat upon the table, protecting thus his literary efforts from chilling criticism by the interposed thickness of his person. From somewhere in his interior proceeded a heart rending compound of squeal and whistle, as of escaping steam,--long-drawn, ear piercing, unvarying in note. “I only just want to see,” protested Selina, struggling to uproot his small body from the scrawl it guarded. But Harold clung limpet-like to the table edge, and his shrill protest continued to deafen humanity and to threaten even the serenities of Olympus. The time seemed come for a demonstration in force. Personally I cared little what soul-outpourings of Harold were pirated by Selina--she was pretty sure to get hold of them sooner or later--and indeed I rather welcomed the diversion as favourable to the undisturbed pursuit of Art. But the clannishness of sex has its unwritten laws. Boys, as such, are sufficiently put upon, maltreated, trodden under, as it is. Should they fail to hang together in perilous times, what disasters, what ignominies, may not be looked for? Possibly even an extinction of the tribe. I dropped my paint brush and sailed shouting into the fray. The result for a short space hung dubious. There is a period of life when the difference of a year or two in age far outweighs the minor advantage of sex. Then the gathers of Selina's frock came away with a sound like the rattle of distant musketry; and this calamity it was, rather than mere brute compulsion, that quelled her indomitable spirit.