Gudrun was very calm. She also did not take these things very
seriously. A new occasion was mostly spectacular to her. However,
Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would never attach herself.
Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by her. The first meetings went off
with a certain humiliating clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her
instructress had any social grace.
Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. Winifred did
not notice human beings unless they were like herself, playful and
slightly mocking. She would accept nothing but the world of amusement,
and the serious people of her life were the animals she had for pets.
On those she lavished, almost ironically, her affection and her
companionship. To the rest of the human scheme she submitted with a
faint bored indifference.
She had a pekinese dog called Looloo, which she loved.
'Let us draw Looloo,' said Gudrun, 'and see if we can get his
Looliness, shall we?' 'Darling!' cried Winifred, rushing to the dog, that sat with
contemplative sadness on the hearth, and kissing its bulging brow.
'Darling one, will you be drawn? Shall its mummy draw its portrait?'
Then she chuckled gleefully, and turning to Gudrun, said: 'Oh let's!' They proceeded to get pencils and paper, and were ready.
'Beautifullest,' cried Winifred, hugging the dog, 'sit still while its
mummy draws its beautiful portrait.' The dog looked up at her with
grievous resignation in its large, prominent eyes. She kissed it
fervently, and said: 'I wonder what mine will be like. It's sure to be
awful.' As she sketched she chuckled to herself, and cried out at times: 'Oh darling, you're so beautiful!' And again chuckling, she rushed to embrace the dog, in penitence, as if
she were doing him some subtle injury. He sat all the time with the
resignation and fretfulness of ages on his dark velvety face. She drew
slowly, with a wicked concentration in her eyes, her head on one side,
an intense stillness over her. She was as if working the spell of some
enchantment. Suddenly she had finished. She looked at the dog, and then
at her drawing, and then cried, with real grief for the dog, and at the
same time with a wicked exultation: 'My beautiful, why did they?' She took her paper to the dog, and held it under his nose. He turned
his head aside as in chagrin and mortification, and she impulsively
kissed his velvety bulging forehead.
''s a Loolie, 's a little Loozie! Look at his portrait, darling, look
at his portrait, that his mother has done of him.' She looked at her
paper and chuckled. Then, kissing the dog once more, she rose and came
gravely to Gudrun, offering her the paper.