The things he drew were extremely odd: long dream-like figures with thin legs trailing after them, giants and pigmies and people having their heads cut off, and ghosts and skeletons rising from graves and flapping after children; and people doing wild dances, their limbs flying about; and amusing monsters and hideous terrifying old women. His caricatures were the best. The grandmother said they were very promising. Julian was always the most successful subject, and he minded dreadfully. Sometimes Judith sat beside him and watched his quick pencil. It was like magic. But always he soon gave up. He had scarcely any interest in his drawings once they were finished. She collected them in sheaves and took them home to gloat over. That he could execute such things and that she should be privileged to observe and to gather up after him!... His drawings were more thrilling even than the music of Julian and Charlie. She could play the piano herself quite nicely, but as for drawing,--there was another clear case of the unreliability of the Bible. However much you cried: ‘I can, I can!’ and rushed, full of faith, to pencil and paper, nothing whatever happened. Once she was suddenly emboldened and said out loud the words rehearsed silently for many weeks, ‘Now draw something for _me_, Roddy.’ Oh, something designed from its conception for your very own,--something which could be labelled (by yourself, since Roddy would certainly refuse) ‘From the artist to Judith Earle,’ with the date: a token, a perpetual memorial of his friendship!... ‘Oh no,’ said Roddy, ‘I can’t.’ He threw down his pencil, instantly bored at the suggestion, smiled and presently wandered off. The smile took the edge off the sting, but there was an old feeling, an oppression, as she watched him going away. It was no use trying to bring Roddy out of his labyrinthine seclusion with personal advances and pretensions to favouritism. Roddy had a power to wound far beyond his years; he seemed grown up sometimes in his crushingness. Now and again he was very funny and invented dances on the lawn to make them laugh. His imitation of a Russian ballet-dancer was wonderful. Also he could walk on his hands or do backward somersaults into the water. This was very thrilling and made him highly respected. Once he and Judith were the two hares in a paper chase. Roddy spied an old umbrella in the hedge and picked it up. It was tattered and gaunt and huge; and there was something friendly about it,--a disreputable reckless jollity. He carried it for a long time, swinging it round and round, and sometimes balancing it on his chin or spearing things with it. At the top of the hill they came to the pond covered with green stuff and a white starry froth of flowers. All around grew flags and forget-me-nots, and the hundred other rare enchanting trivialities of watery places. ‘Well, I don’t want this old umbrella,’ said Roddy. He considered the water. ‘Do you?’ ‘No. Throw it away.’