Adventure stories; Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Fantasy literature; Short stories
It is rather trying to have to walk three miles to the station, to say
nothing of the three miles back, to meet a cousin you have never seen
and never wish to see, especially if you have to leave a kite half made,
and there is no proper lock to the shed you are making your kite in.
The road was flat and dusty, the sun felt much too warm on his back, the
hill to the station was long and steep, and the train was nearly an hour
late, because it was a train on the South-Eastern Railway. So William
was exceedingly cross, and he would have been crosser still if he could
have known that I should ever call him William, for though that happened
to be his name, the one he 'answered to' (as the stolen-dog
advertisements say) was 'Billy.' So perhaps it would be kind of me to
speak of him as Billy, because it is rather horrid to do things you know
people won't like, even if you think they'll never know you've done
them.
Well, the train came in, and it was annoying to Billy, very, that four
or five boys should bundle out of the train, and he should have to go up
to them one after the other and say:
'I say, is your name Harold St. Leger?'
He did not particularly like the look of any of the boys, and of course
it happened that the very last one he spoke to was Harold, and that he
was also the one whom Billy liked least particularly of the whole lot.
'Oh, you are, are you?' was all he could find to say when Harold had
blushingly owned to his name. Then in manly tones Billy gave the order
about Harold's luggage and the carrier, said 'Come along!' and Harold
came.
Harold was a fattish boy with whitey-brown hair, and he was as soft and
white as a silkworm. Billy did not admire him. He himself was hard and
brown, with thin arms and legs and joints like the lumps of clay on
branches that the gardener has grafted. And Harold did not admire _him_.
There was little conversation on the way home; when you don't want to
have a visitor and he doesn't want to be one, talking is not much fun.
When they got home there was tea. Billy's mother talked politely to
Harold, but that did not make anyone any happier. Then Billy took his
cousin round and showed him the farm and the stock, and Harold was less
interested than you would think a boy could be. At last, weary of trying
to behave nicely, Billy said:
'I suppose there must be _something_ you like, however much of a muff
you are. Well, you can jolly well find it out for yourself. I'm going to
finish my kite.'
The silkworm-soft face of Harold lighted up.
'Oh, _I_ can make kites,' he said; 'I've invented a new kind. I'll help
you if you'll let me.'
Harold, eager, quick fingered, skilful, in the shed among the string,
and the glue, and the paper, and the bendable, breakable laths, was
quite a different person from Harold, nervous and dull, among the
farmyard beasts. Billy allowed him to help with the kite, and he began
to respect his cousin a little more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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