“Don’t be silly.”
“That isn’t silly,” said Wynne. “Why is it silly?”
“If you say another word you will go straight to bed.”
The remark was as surely in place as the clock which stood on the dead centre of the mantelpiece.
VI
Middle class suburban prosperity was not the atmosphere to produce the best results from Wynne Rendall’s active, sensitive brain. He could not understand his parents, and they did not attempt to understand him. His elder brother and sister, being three and four years his senior, left him outside their reckoning. They played sedate games, in which he was never invited to take part. To tell the truth, he had little enough inclination, for most of their ideas of entertainment revolved round commercial enterprise, which he cordially disliked. His brother would build a shop with the towel-horse, stock it with nursery rubbish, and sell the goods, after much ill-humoured bartering, to his sister. She, poor child, in spite of frequent importunities, never once was allowed to play the rôle of shopkeeper, but continued as a permanent customer until the game had lost its relish.
Thus Wynne was thrown very much on his own resources. He read voraciously whatever books he could procure, and spent a deal of time working out his own intricate little thoughts.
Somewhere at the back of his head was a strong conviction that the world held finer things than those surrounding him. To strengthen this belief were certain passages in the books he read. On the whole, however, he was rather disappointed with reading. This in itself was not surprising, in view of the quality of the books to which he had access. It seemed to him that a man might very easily devise more romantic imaginings than any with which he had come into contact.
To test the truth of this theory, he took a pencil stump and some paper into the garden and tried to write about pleasing things. But the words he desired were hard to find, hard to spell, and difficult to string together. So, instead, he decided to draw the little Princess who was the heroine of his unwritten tale. In this he was more successful and achieved a dainty little figure with an agreeable smile. To some extent this pleased him, but not altogether. He was painfully conscious that her feet were clumsy, and her eyes ill drawn, and that the picture did not express half he desired to express. A picture was stationary, and lacked the movement and variety of words. Words could describe the picture, but the picture could not speak the words. Thus his first artistic experiment was fraught with disappointment. As luck would have it, his father chanced by and flicked the paper from his fingers.
“What’s this, eh?” he demanded. “Wasting your time drawing! Why aren’t you at play?”