"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.

I am no stickler for commonplace colours or conventional shapes in a work
of art, but I do like things to be recognisable; to know, for instance,
when a thing is meant to be a man and when it is meant to be a boat, and
when it is meant to be a pookin and when it is meant to be a sun. The art
of Priscilla seems to me to satisfy this test much better than that of many
of our modern _maestri_. Strictly representational it may not be, but there
are none of your whorls and cylinders and angles and what nots.

But I also insist that a work of art should appeal to the imagination as
well as to the eye, and there seemed to me details about this picture that
needed clearing up.

"Where were these men going to, Priscilla?" I asked.

"They was going to Wurvin," she answered in the tone of a mother who
instructs her child. "And what do you think they was going to do there?"

"I don't know."

"They was going to see Auntie Isabel."

"And what did they do then?"

"They had dinner," she cried enthusiastically. "And do you know what they
did after dinner?"

"I don't."

"They went on the Front to see the fire-escape."

It seemed to me now that the conception was mellow, rounded and complete.
It had all the haunting mystery and romance of the sea about it. It was
reminiscent of the _Ancient Mariner_. It savoured of the books of Mr.
CONRAD. It reminded me not a little of those strange visitations which come
to quiet wat