It suddenly seemed as if little boys must like to look at pictures. Ernest had clambered up into a big chair, and was sitting flattened against its back, his legs sticking straight out in front of him, and a look of mild lassitude on his face. He took with some alacrity the illustrated newspaper supplement which I gave him, but my conscience tortured me a little as to whether his interest was the desperate one of demanding something for his mind to feed on, however arid it might be, or whether it was a genuine æsthetic response. He gave all the pictures exactly the same amount of time, rubbing his hand over each to make sure that it was flat, and he showed no desire to talk about anything he had seen. Since most of the pictures were of war, my pacifist spirit rebelled against dwelling on them. His celerity dismayed me. It became necessary to find more pictures. I had a sudden horror of an afternoon of picture-books, each devoured in increasingly accelerated fashion. How stupid seemed my rows of dully printed books! Not one of them could disgorge a picture, no matter how hard you shook it. Despair seized me when I found only a German handbook of Greek sculpture, and another of Michelangelo. In hopeful trepidation I began on them. I wondered how long they would last. It was clearly an unfamiliar field to Ernest. My attempts to test his classical knowledge were a failure. He recognized the Greeks as men and women, but not as gods, and there were moments when I was afraid he felt their nudity as indecent. He insisted on calling the Winged Victory an angel. There had evidently been religion in Ernest’s career. I told him that these were pictures of marble statues from Greece, of gods and things, and I hurriedly sketched such myths as I could remember in an attempt to overtake Ernest’s headlong rush of interest. But he did not seem to listen, and he ended by calling every flowing female form an angel. He laughed greatly at their missing arms and heads. I do not think I quite impressed him with the Greek spirit.