Finally, towards the end of the term, Peter and Bobby Galleon may be
seen sitting on a high hill. It is a Sunday afternoon in spring, and far
away there is a thin line of faintly blue hills. Nearer to view
there are grey heights more sharply outlined and rough, like drawing
paper--painted with a green wood, a red-roofed farm, a black church
spire, and a brown ploughed field. Immediately below them a green hedge
hanging over a running stream that has caught the blue of the sky. Above
them vast swollen clouds flooding slowly with the faint yellow of the
coming sunset, hanging stationary above the stream and seeming to have
flung to earth some patches of their colour in the first primroses below
the hedge. A rabbit watches, his head out of his hole.
The boys' voices cut the air.
“I say, Bobby, don't you ever wonder about things--you never seem to
want to ask questions.”
“No, I don't suppose I do. I'm awfully stupid. Father says so.”
“It's funny your being stupid when your father's so clever.”
“Do you mind my being stupid?”
“No--only I'd like you to want to know things--things like what people
are like inside--their thinking part I mean, not their real insides.
People like Mother Gill and old Binns and Prester Ma: and then what
one's going to do when one's grown up--you never want to know that.”
“No, it'll just come I suppose. Of course, I shan't be clever like the
governor.”
“No, I don't think you will.”
Once again: “Do you mind my being so stupid, Peter?”
“No--I'm awfully stupid too. But I like to wonder about things.
There was once a man I met at home with rings and things who lived in
London....” Peter stops, Galleon wouldn't be interested in that.
“Anyhow, you know, you've got Cards--he's an awfully clever chap.”
“Yes, he's wonderful,” Peter sighs, “and he's seen such a lot of
things.”
“Yes, but you know I don't think Cards really cares for you as much as
I do.” This is an approach to sentiment, and Peter brushes it hastily
aside:
“I like you both awfully. But I say, won't it be splendid to be grown up
in London?”
“I don't know--lots of fellows don't like it.”
“That's nothing,” Peter says slowly, “to do with its not being
splendid!”
And the rabbit, tired of listening to such tiresome stuff, thinks that
they must be very young boys indeed.
CHAPTER VI
A LOOKING-GLASS, A SILVER MATCH-BOX, A GLASS OF WHISKY, AND--VOX POPULI
I
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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