"There's not many lads your age," grumbled Mr. Paragon, "that have seen a transit of Jupiter's third moon." "I know," said Peter, trying to feel excited and grateful. He had been looking forward to this evening for weeks. Why was he unable to enjoy it? He repeated the question to himself as, half an hour later, he lay peacefully in bed. Then he found himself trying to remember the exact phrase about Romeo and the little stars. IV Peter went daily to school in a dirty quarter of the town at least two miles from home. The house of the Paragons was upon the borders of the western or fashionable suburb of Hamingburgh. The school barely escaped the great manufacturing district to the east and south. It was a branch school of the great local foundation of King Edward VI. In the phrase of the local roughs, through whose courts and alleys he passed, Peter was a "grammar-cat." He was supposed to go to school by the main road, where he was more or less under the protection of the police. For between the roughs and the grammar-cats was perpetual war; and to take the shorter route through the courts and alleys was an act of provocation. But Peter hankered after the forbidden road. His father, showing him the way to school, had stopped at a certain corner: "This," he said, "is the shortest way; but you had better go round by the main road." "Why?" Peter had asked. "It's a nasty neighbourhood," said Mr. Paragon. From that moment the shortest route became for Peter a North-West Passage. He would stand at the fatal corner, looking up the street with its numberless small entries. Then, on a memorable day, he plunged. First he had a soaring sense of his audacity. He felt he had left the laws behind. To win through now must entirely depend on his personal resource. At the doors of an immense factory men, women, and boys stood in line, waiting for the signal to blow them into work. Peter felt with a sinking at the stomach that he was an object of curiosity. He indeed looked strangely out of place in his neat suit of a small tar, with a sailor's knot foppishly fastened at the breast. The curious eyes of the waiting group followed him up the street. He was painfully aware, as he passed, that jocular remarks in sleepy midland slang were freely exchanged upon his apparition. Higher up the street a little rough stopped for a moment and stared, then started into an alley screaming. The street was suddenly alive. Peter, flinging self-respect to the winds, started to run. A stone caught him smartly on the heel, and he thought he was lost. But another cry was almost immediately sounded. The helmet of a policeman came glinting up the street. The roughs vanished as quickly as they had appeared.