"You always were a brick," said the boy. He stared ahead through the open window. "There's such an awful lot to learn--and I want to begin--you _must_ start young. I remember he said to me one day--I've never forgotten it, somehow--'I've been painting now for fifty years--and I'm just beginning to master my art. I know that my hand is one with my brain and the long apprenticeship is past. And now'--he looked so awfully sad--'there are just a few years left and then I shall die--and it's all over'!" "But he'd had the keen joy of the fight." Jill had a horror of morbidity. "And he'd won through--that must feel fine!" A warm colour flushed her cheek. "Yes--but it seemed so awfully hard, that just as life was worth living, all that labour and knowledge must go, with everything else ... I call it rotten!" "I don't believe it does," said Jill. "Peter doesn't, either," she added. "We were talking of that the day we drove to Henley and stopped at the Fair. I think all real effort survives--somehow--somewhere--that nothing's lost. Or else the struggle--to say nothing of failure!--would be too cruel--just sheer waste! Think of all the pioneers--Cecil Rhodes--Gordon--Scott? I can't believe that their energy and heroism doesn't go on... You remember Moses and his death? How he only _looked_ on the promised land. It always seemed to me so unfair until one day when I was reading of the Transfiguration on the Mount--when Moses and Elijah appeared--(in their earthly forms, remember that!--) and there he was--_in_ the promised land. Moses, I mean--centuries later. He'd got there, you see, _after_ death." "That's jolly fine," said the schoolboy--"I never thought of it that way." The speech sank into his memory. Years ahead, in his hour of need--one of those moods of black despair which creative art brings to a man who strains up to a high ideal--he would see before him Jill's clear eyes, the oval face, slightly flushed, and illumined by an inner light which seemed to rise from her brave young soul. She glanced now up at the clock. "I must go, Roddy--there's Mother's soup--and in half an hour we'll have tea. Down in the kitchen, it's easier." "All right. I'll make some toast. I'll just finish this and come. Have you got any anchovy paste, old girl? If so, I'll do you some 'devilled biscuits.'" "I'm afraid not." Jill laughed. It sounded a hot entertainment for the sultry summer afternoon. "You might keep an eye on the front door. Lizzie's upstairs, sewing, by Mother." "I'll answer it--don't you worry." He flung an arm about the girl and gave her a sudden boisterous kiss. Jill responded eagerly. Roddy was not demonstrative and she knew the value of the caress, hungry herself for a little love. Then, with a bright face, she departed into the depths of the basement, picking her way with careful feet and a keen look-out for black beetles.