Once translated, the picture could hardly be mistaken. There was a range of mountains in the background, and a distinct sky line plumed with pines,—those tall, dark trees that symbolize, above all other trees, the wilderness.
"Not bad for a six-year-old boy," the teacher commented. "But where, Bruce, have you ever seen or heard of such pines?" But Bruce did not know.
Another puzzling adventure that stuck in Bruce's memory had happened only a few months after his arrival at the Square House when a man had taken him home on trial with the idea of adoption. Adoption, little Bruce had gathered, was something like heaven,—a glorious and happy end of all trouble and unpleasantness. Such was the idea he got from the talk of the other Orphans, and even from the grown-ups who conducted the establishment.
All the incidents and details of the excursion with this prospective parent were extremely dim and vague. He did not know to what city he went, nor had he any recollection whatever of the people he met there. But he did remember, with remarkable clearness, the perplexing talk that the man and the superintendent of the Square House had together on his return.
"He won't do," the stranger had said. "I tried him out and he won't fill in in my family. And I've fetched him back."
The superintendent must have looked at the little curly-haired boy with considerable wonder; but he didn't ask questions. There was no particular need of them. The man was quite ready to talk, and the fact that a round-eyed child was listening to him with both ears open, did not deter him a particle.
"I believe in being frank," the man said, "and I tell you there's something vicious in that boy's nature. It came out the very first moment he was in the house, when the Missus was introducing him to my eight-year-old son. 'This is little Turner,' she said—and this boy sprang right at him. I'd never let little Turner learn to fight, and this boy was on top of him and was pounding him with his fists before we could pull him off. Just like a wildcat—screaming and sobbing and trying to get at him again. I didn't understand it at all."
Nor did the superintendent understand; nor—in these later years—Bruce either.
He was quite a big boy, nearly ten, when he finally left the Square House. And there was nothing flickering or dim about the memory of this occasion.
A tall, exceedingly slender man sat beside the window,—a man well dressed but with hard lines about his mouth and hard eyes. Yet the superintendent seemed particularly anxious to please him. "You will like this sturdy fellow," he said, as Bruce was ushered in.