Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/294

 couple of horses to be sent out from a Winstonbury livery stable, and these early morning rides and his talks with his father helped Christopher to a new appreciation of life. He seemed to realize that a phase of it had passed, and that a particular experience can never be repeated. In the forest "rides" and upon the heathy uplands of Stoneberry he was very far from the turmoil of life, and from the sinister and increasing bitterness of civilization. Organized life was growing more tyrannical, and the industrial crowd—in blind strivings to escape—was attempting to impose a yet more senseless tryanny.

Yet Kit remembered that Mary—the seller of programmes in a theatre—had shown no bitterness. She had asked to be loved, but she had not asked to be given children. She had had a peculiar dread of children, and had shrunk away from the thought of motherhood.

"Give the world another clerk or factory hand? Would you?"

He remembered her putting that question to him, and when he had tried to answer it, she had given him an astonishing revelation of her insight into the soul of "Peter Pan."

"That's what we want, Kit, thousands of little playful rebels like that boy. If only a lot of us would refuse to grow up."

He realized that Mary had been one of the rebels.

Sorrell, sharing in one of these heart-to-heart talks under the Stoneberry beeches, confessed that his sympathies were with the rebel.

"Not the mulish mob, old chap, but the free-lance, the lone fighter."

"Isn't he becoming rather rare?"

"His day will come again. He is the one inevitable figure. Besides—he is the only really happy soul. A bad citizen—as organized slaving understands citizenship. What may good citizenship mean in the future,—being swallowed alive by the Labour Dragon, a clumsy beast crushing life under its crawling belly. Ha,—the sword of St. George."

Kit's face was very grave.

"You have had to fight, pater. What did you fight for?"

"For myself,—you."