In a green late April evening, among the dusky pine shadows, Alix drew Percival Briggs. Percival stood with his small cleft chin lifted truculently, small blue eyes deep under fair, frowning brows, one scratched brown leg bare to the knee, dirty hands thrust into torn pockets. He was the worst little boy in the wood, and had been till six months ago the worst little boy in the Sunday-school class of Alix's cousin Dorothy. He had not been converted six months ago, but Dorothy, like so many, had renounced Sunday-school to work in a V.A.D. hospital. Alix, who was drawing Percival, worked neither in a Sunday-school nor in a hospital. She only drew. She drew till the green light became green gloom, lit by a golden star that peered down between the pines. She had a pale, narrow, delicate, irregular sort of face, broad-browed, with a queer, cynical, ironic touch to it, and purple-blue eyes that sometimes opened very wide and sometimes narrowed into slits. When they narrowed she looked as from behind a visor, critical, defensive, or amused; when they opened wide she looked singularly unguarded, as if the bars were up and she, unprotected, might receive the enemy's point straight and clean. Behind her, on the wood path, was a small donkey between the shafts of a small cart. A rough yellow dog scratched and sniffed and explored among the roots of the trees. Alix said to Percival, 'That will do, thank you. Here you are,' and fished out sixpence in coppers from her pocket, and he clutched and gripped them in a small retentive fist. Alix, who was rather lame, put her stool and easel and charcoal into the cart, got in herself, beat the donkey, and ambled on along the path, followed by the yellow dog. The evening was dim and green, and smelt of pines. The donkey trotted past cottage gardens, and they were sweet with wallflowers. More stars came out and peered down through the tree-tops. Alix whistled softly, a queer little Polish tune, indeterminate, sad and gay. 2 Two miles up the path a side-track led off from it, and this the donkey-cart took, till it fetched up in a little yard. Alix climbed out, unharnessed the donkey, put him to bed in a shed, collected her belongings, and limped out of the yard, leaning a little on the ivory-topped stick she carried. She had had a diseased hip-joint as a child, which had left her right leg slightly contracted. She came round into a garden. It smelt of wallflowers and the other things which flower at the end of April; and, underneath all these, of pines. The pine-woods came close up to the garden's edge, crowding and humming like bees. Pine-needles strewed the lawn. The tennis-lawn, it was most summers; but this summer one didn't play tennis, one was too busy. So the lawn was set with croquet hoops, a wretched game, but one which wounded soldiers can play. Dorothy used to bring them over from the hospital to spend the afternoon.