mas party at the Gordons', next
door. Did not Ethel Gordon ask him particularly to come, and did he not
refuse her sullenly? What a brute he was to treat her like that! If she
were to ask him again, he thinks he would not say no, though he does
hate parties.

Ethel is a dear girl, and never seems to think him good-for-nothing, as
most people do. Perhaps it is sham though--no, he can't think that when
he remembers how patiently and kindly she has borne with his senseless
fits of temper and tried to laugh away his gloom.

Not every girl as pretty as Ethel is would care to notice him, and
persist in it in spite of everything; yet he has sulked with her of
late. Was it because she had favoured Lionel? He is ashamed to think
that this may have been the reason.

Never mind, that is all over now; he will start clear with everybody. He
will ask Ethel, too, to forgive him. Is there nothing he can do to
please her? Yes some time ago she had asked him to draw something for
her. (He detests drawing lessons, but he has rather a taste for drawing
things out of his own head.) He had told her, not too civilly, that he
had work enough without doing drawings for girls. He will paint her
something to-night as a surprise; he will begin as soon as tea is
cleared away; it will be more sociable than reading a book.

And then already he sees a vision of the warm little panelled room, and
himself getting out his colour-box and sitting down to paint by
lamp-light--for any light does for his kind of colouring--while his
mother sits opposite and Lionel watches the picture growing under his
hand.

What shall he draw? He gets quite absorbed in thinking over this; his
own tastes run in a gory direction, but perhaps Ethel, being a girl, may
not care for battles or desperate duels. A compromise strikes him; he
will draw a pirate ship: that will be first rate, with the black flag
flying on the mainmast, and the pirate captain on the poop scouring the
ocean with a big glass in search of merchantmen; all about the deck and
rigging he can put the crew, with red caps, and belts stuck full of
pistols and daggers.

And on the right there shall be a bit of the pirate island, with a mast
and another black flag--he knows he will enjoy picking out the skull and
cross-bones in thick Chinese white--and then, if there is room, he will
add a cannon, and perhaps a palm tree. A pirate island always has palm
trees.

He is so full of this projected picture of hi