It served to show the gilt of the narrow frame and the soft black of the print upon which Peter had looked so many times that he thought now he was still seeing it as he lay staring in the dusk--a picture of a young man in bright armour with loosened hair, riding down a particularly lumpy and swollen dragon.

Flames came out of the creature's mouth in the immemorial fashion of dragons, but the young man was not hurt by them.

He sat there lightly, his horse curvetting, his lance thrust down the dragon's throat and coming out of the back of his head, doing a great deed easily, the way people like to think of great things being done.

It was a very narrow picture, so narrow that you might think that it had something to do with the dragon's doubling on himself and the charger's forefeet being up in the air to keep within the limits of the frame, and the exclusion from it of the Princess whom, as his father had told him the story, the young knight George had rescued from those devouring jaws.

It came out now, quite clearly, that she must have had cheeks as red as June apples and eyes like the pools of spring rain in Bloombury wood, and her not being there in the picture was only a greater security for her awaiting him at this moment in the House with the Shining Walls.
There was, for the boy still staring at it through the dusk, something particularly personal in the picture, for ever since his father had died, three years ago, Peter had had a dragon of his own to fight.