She had been angry at him times in plenty--over some childish game--and he remembered how that light had grown and brightened. She had flung at him too, like a lynx springing from a tree. Bruce paused in his reflections to wonder at himself over the simile--for lynx were no especial acquaintances of his. He knew them only through books, as he knew many other things that stirred his imagination. But he laughed at the memory of her sudden, explosive ferocity,--the way her hands had smacked against his cheeks, and her sharp little nails had scratched him. Curiously, he had never fought back as is the usual thing between small boys and small girls. And it wasn't exactly chivalry either, rather just an inability to feel resentment. Besides, there were always tears and repentance afterward, and certain pettings that he openly scorned and secretly loved. "I must have been a strange kid!" Bruce thought. It was true he had; and nothing was stranger than this attitude toward Baby Sister. He was always so gentle with her, but at the same time he contemplated her with a sort of amused tolerance that is to be expected in strong men rather than solemn little boys. "Little Spitfire" he sometimes called her; but no one else could call her anything but Linda. For Bruce had been an able little fighter, even in those days. There was other evidence of strangeness. He was fond of drawing pictures. This was nothing in itself; many little boys are fond of drawing pictures. Nor were his unusually good. Their strangeness lay in his subjects. He liked to draw animals in particular,--the animals he read about in school and in such books as were brought to him. And sometimes he drew Indians and cowboys. And one day--when he wasn't half watching what he was doing--he drew something quite different. Perhaps he wouldn't have looked at it twice, if the teacher hadn't stepped up behind him and taken it out of his hands. It was "geography" then, not "drawing", and he should have been "paying attention." And he had every reason to think that the teacher would crumple up his picture and send him to the cloak-room for punishment. But she did no such thing. It was true that she seized the paper, and her fingers were all set to crumple it. But when her eyes glanced down, her fingers slowly straightened. Then she looked again--carefully. "What is this, Bruce?" she asked. "What have you been drawing?" Curiously, she had quite forgotten to scold him for not paying attention. And Bruce, who had drawn the picture with his thoughts far away from his pencil, had to look and see himself. Then he couldn't be sure. "I--I don't know," the child answered. But the picture was even better than his more conscious drawings, and it did look like something. He looked again, and for an instant let his thoughts go wandering here and there. "Those are trees," he said. A word caught at his throat and he blurted it out. "Pines! Pine trees, growing on a mountain."