PRISCILLA PAINTS. "There was a lot of men in the boat," said Priscilla from behind the table, where she sat daubing with little energetic grunts. "Oh, there were, were there?" I answered from behind _The Times_. Confident of arousing my enthusiasm in the end, she continued to issue tantalising bulletins about the progress of the great work. "It was an all-colour boat," she told me, "purple and yellow and green." "A very nice kind of boat too," I agreed. "And the biggest man of all hadn't got _any_ body at all." I suggested weakly that perhaps the biggest man of all had left his body behind on the table at home. The suggestion was scorned. "No, he hadn't never had any body at all, _this_ man," she replied. And then, as my interest seemed to be flagging again, "They all had _very_ rosy faces; and do you know why they had?" "I don't, I'm sure." "Because they'd eaten up all their greens." Vanquished at last, I went over to visit the eupeptic voyagers. Seven in all, they stood in their bright boat on a blue sea beneath a round and burning sun. Their legs were long and thin, their bodies globular (all save one), and their faces large. They were dressed apparently in light pink doublets and hose, and on his head each wore a huge purple turban the shape of a cottage loaf, surmounted by a ragged plume. They varied greatly in stature, but their countenances were all fixed in the same unmeaning stare. Take it all in all, it was an eerie and terrible scene. "I don't quite see how the boat moves along, Priscilla," I said; "it hasn't any oars or sail." It was a tactless remark and the artist made no reply. I did my best to cover my blunder. "I expect the wind blew very hard on their feathers," I said, "and that drove them along." "What colour is the wind?" inquired Priscilla. She had me there. I confessed that I did not know. "It was a brown wind," she decided, impatient at my lack of resource, and slapped a wet typhoon of madder on the page. There was no more doubt about the wind. "And is the picture finished now?" I asked her. "No, it isn't finished. I haven't drawn the pookin yet." The pookin is a confusion in the mind of Priscilla between a pelican and a toucan, because she saw them both for the first time on the same day. In this case it consisted of an indigo splodge and a long red bar cutting right through the brown wind and penetrating deeply into the yellow sun. "It had a _very_ long beak," observed Priscilla. "It had," I agreed.