Thus Wynne was thrown very much on his own resources. He read voraciously whatever books he could procure, and spent a deal of time working out his own intricate little thoughts. Somewhere at the back of his head was a strong conviction that the world held finer things than those surrounding him. To strengthen this belief were certain passages in the books he read. On the whole, however, he was rather disappointed with reading. This in itself was not surprising, in view of the quality of the books to which he had access. It seemed to him that a man might very easily devise more romantic imaginings than any with which he had come into contact. To test the truth of this theory, he took a pencil stump and some paper into the garden and tried to write about pleasing things. But the words he desired were hard to find, hard to spell, and difficult to string together. So, instead, he decided to draw the little Princess who was the heroine of his unwritten tale. In this he was more successful and achieved a dainty little figure with an agreeable smile. To some extent this pleased him, but not altogether. He was painfully conscious that her feet were clumsy, and her eyes ill drawn, and that the picture did not express half he desired to express. A picture was stationary, and lacked the movement and variety of words. Words could describe the picture, but the picture could not speak the words. Thus his first artistic experiment was fraught with disappointment. As luck would have it, his father chanced by and flicked the paper from his fingers. “What’s this, eh?” he demanded. “Wasting your time drawing! Why aren’t you at play?” “I’m ’musing myself,” replied Wynne, sulkily. “You amuse yourself with a ball, then, like anybody else.” It is curious how closely a ball is associated with amusement. The average man is incapable of realizing entertainment that does not include the use of a ball. Reputations have been made and lost through ability or inability to handle it in the proper manner. A man is considered a very poor sort of fellow if he expresses disdain and contempt for the ball. Conceive the catastrophic consequences that would result if a law were passed forbidding the manufacture of balls? A shudder runs through the healthy-minded at the bare thought of such a thing. Mr. Rendall’s anger can readily be appreciated, then, when his son made answer: “There isn’t any fun in that.” “No fun?” roared Mr. Rendall. “Time you got some proper ideas into your head, young fellow. Be ashamed of yourself! Fetch a ball from the nursery at once, and let me see you enjoying yourself with it, or you’ll hear something. Understand this, too—there’s not going to be any drawing in this household, or a lot of damn high-falutin artistic business either. Get that into your head as soon as you can. Be off.” Ten minutes later, in a white heat of fury, Wynne was savagely kicking a silly woollen ball from one end of the grass patch to the other.