Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/80

 "Your Mr. Roland is going to make the Pelican hum, I hear?"

Sorrell did not know the exact noise that a pelican made, but he did not think that it was a humming bird.

"Mr. Roland's a man of ideas."

"Ha!" said Mr. Bloxom, "we are rather conservative down this way. How will that feel under the arms? Don't want it too tight, do you, for handling luggage and things."

"I think this coat of mine is about right."

He found Mr. Bloxom examining the tailor's mark inside the collar of his blue serge coat. That suit had been a post-war extravagance.

"Ponds. H'm, good people. I suppose"

Mr. Bloxom did not complete the sentence—but Sorrell read what was in his mind. He supposed that Sorrell had been a valet or porter at some flats, and that the suit had been passed on to him by some member of the—aristocracy, moneyed or otherwise.

The castle mound became a favourite haunt of the Sorrells. There were seats under the beech trees, but Kit and his father preferred the turf. Winstonbury lay below them in crowded picturesqueness, and Kit played a game of his own with the town, treating it as a sort of jig-saw puzzle. He began to know all the more prominent buildings, and he could tell exactly where Vine Gee lay beyond the little grey bell-turret of the Grammar School.

Castle Hill was more than a view point. It formed a height from which the two Sorrells looked out and down upon the immediate future, Kit's future. There was the problem of his schooling. Was it to be the old Grammar School of Henry the Eight's founding, planted in an old house of the Carmelites, or the town school, visible from Castle Hill, and lying near the gas-works, an ugly barrack of a place built of yellow brick, surrounded by an asphalted playground and iron railings?

"No humbug, Kit," said his father; "there is going to be no humbug between us. Firstly, it's a question of money. I dare say I shall be able to afford the fees later on. At the Grammar School you would find yourself with the sons of local tradesmen, clerks and farmers. You would learn a little Latin, some mathematics, less history, and perhaps a smattering of science. Not much real use in life. You