his desk, his watering-can or book, he would probably have
replied, "_They_ are not drawing-copies," and would have laughed at your
absurd joke. No, he was not taught to draw _things_, nor to give
expression to impression.

And he had a special warder all to himself, who watched him as a cat
watches a mouse. However, warders cannot prevent looks and smiles, and
whenever Moussa Isa saw the Brahmin youth, he gave a peculiar look and a
meaning smile. It was borne in upon the clever young man that the Hubshi
looked at his neck, below his ear, when he smiled that dreadful smile.

Sometimes a significant gesture accompanied the meaning smile. For
Moussa Isa had decided, upon the rejection of his prayer by the
Committee, to wait until he was a little older and bigger, more like a
proper criminal and less of a wretched little "juvenile offender," and
then to qualify, by murder, for the Aden Jail--with the unoffered help
of the Brahmin boy.

Allah would vouchsafe opportunity, and when he did so, Moussa Isa, his
servant, would seize it. Doubtless it would come as soon as he was big
enough to receive the privileges of an adult and serious criminal.
Anyhow, the insult would be properly punished and the honour of the
Somal race avenged....

Came the day when certain of the sinful inhabitants of the Duri
Reformatory were to be conducted to a neighbouring Government High
School, a centre for the official Drawing Examinations for the district,
there to sit and be examined in the gentle art of Art.

To this end they had been trained in the copying of lines and in the
painting of areas of conventional shape, not that they might be made to
observe natural form, express themselves in reproduction, render the
inner outer, originate, articulate ... but that they might pass an
examination in copying unnatural things in impossible colours. Thus it
came to pass that, in the big hall of this school, divers of the
Reformed found themselves copying, and colouring the copy of, a curious
picture pinned to a blackboard--the picture of a floral wonder unknown
to Botany, possessed of delicate mauve leaves, blue-veined, shaped some
like the oak-leaf and some like the ivy; of long slender blades like
those of the iris, but of tenderest pink; of beautiful and profusely
chromatic blossoms, reminding one now of the orchid, now of the
sunflower and anon of the forget-me-not; and likewise of clustering
fulgent fruit.

And at the back of all these buddi