Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/359

Rh They were like two brothers, an elder and a younger brother, neither of them tall, but both fairly broad, both with something delicate and high-bred and yet something powerful in their build—Van der Welcke was young still and slender for his nine-and-thirty years—and both, under the same sort of cap, had the same face, the same steel-blue eyes, the same straight profile, with its short nose, well-formed mouth and broad chin, though one was a man and the other a boy. They pedalled and pedalled and devoured the roads on that scorching August morning, talking gaily like two friends.

“Let’s stop here, Addie, and take a rest,” said Van der Welcke, at length, out of breath.

They alighted, leant their machines against a couple of trees, flung themselves on the mound of needles under the fir-trees, which rose silently and peacefully, calm as cathedral-pillars.

“I say, I’m tired,” said Van der Welcke, feeling a little older, for the moment, than his son. “Addie, how you take it out of your father!”

Addie laughed, pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Van der Welcke rested his head on Addie’s knee.

“Move higher up: you’re not comfortable like that,” said Addie.

And, catching his father under the arm-pits, he hoisted him up a bit:

“No, that won’t do either,” he said. “Look here, you’re squashing my stomach!”

“Is this better?”