“I'm sorry--” Bobby said vaguely, and then slowly recognition came into his eyes. “Peter!” he said in a voice lost in amazement, the colour flooding his cheeks. It was all absurdly moving; they were quite ridiculously stirred, both of them. The lamps were coming out down Oxford Street, a pale saffron sky outlined the dark bulk of the Church that is opposite Mudie's shop and stands back from the street, a little as though it wondered at all the noise and clamour, a limpid and watery blue still lingered, wavering, in the evening sky. They turned into an A.B.C. shop and ordered glasses of milk and they sat and looked at one another. They had altered remarkably little and to both of them, although the roar of the Oxford Street traffic was outside the window, it might have been, easily enough, that a clanging bell would soon summon them back to ink-stained desks and Latin exercises. “Why, in heaven's name, did you ever get out of my sight so completely? I wrote to Treliss again and again but I don't suppose anything was forwarded.” “They don't know where I am.” “But why did you never write to me?” “Why should I? I wanted to do something first--to show you-” “What rot! Is that friendship? I call that the most selfish thing I've ever known.” No, obviously enough, Bobby could never understand that kind of thing. With him, once a friend always a friend, that is what life is for. With Peter, once an adventure always an adventure--_that_ is what life is for--but as soon as a friend ceases to be an adventure, why then-- But Bobby had not ceased to be an adventure. He was, as he sat there, more of one than he had ever been before. “What have you been doing all these years?” “Been in a bookshop.” “In a bookshop?” “Yes, selling second-hand books.” “What else?” “Oh reading a lot... seeing one or two people... and some music.” Peter was vague; what after all had he been doing? Bobby looked at him tenderly and affectionately. “You want seeing after--you look fierce, as you used to when you'd been having a bad time at school. The day they all hissed you.” “But I haven't been having a bad time. I've had a jolly good one. By the way,” Peter leant forward, “have you seen or heard anything of Cards?” Bobby coloured a little. “No, not for a long time. His mother died. He's a great swell now with heaps of money, I believe. I'm not his sort a bit.” They drank milk and beamed upon one another. Peter wanted to tell Bobby everything. That was one of his invaluable qualities, that one did like telling him everything. Talking to him eagerly now, Peter wondered how it could be that he'd ever managed to get through these many years without him. Bobby simply existed to help his friends and that was the kind of person that Peter had so often wanted.