Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/204

 “But I haven't been having a bad time. I've had a jolly good one. By the way,” Peter leant forward, “have you seen or heard anything of Cards?”

Bobby coloured a little. “No, not for a long time. His mother died. He's a great swell now with heaps of money, I believe. I'm not his sort a bit.”

They drank milk and beamed upon one another. Peter wanted to tell Bobby everything. That was one of his invaluable qualities, that one did like telling him everything. Talking to him eagerly now, Peter wondered how it could be that he'd ever managed to get through these many years without him. Bobby simply existed to help his friends and that was the kind of person that Peter had so often wanted.

But in it all—in their talking, their laughing together, their remembering certain catchwords that they had used together, there was nothing more remarkable than their finding each other exactly as they had been during those years before at Dawson's. Not even Bobby's tremendous statement could alter that.

“I'm married,” he said.

“Married?”

Bobby blushed. “Yes—two years now—got a baby. She's quite splendid!”

“Oh!” Peter was a little blank. Somehow this did remove Bobby a little—it also made him, suddenly, strangely old.

“But it doesn't make any difference,” Bobby said, leaning forward eagerly and putting his hand on Peter's arm—“not the least difference. You two will simply get on famously. I've so often told her about you and we've always been hoping that you'd turn up again—and now she'll be simply delighted.”

But it made a difference to Peter, nevertheless. He went back a little into his shell; Bobby with a home and a wife and a baby couldn't spare time, of course, for ordinary friends. But even here his conscience pricked him. Did he not know Bobby well enough to be assured that he was as firm and solid as a rock, that nothing at all could move or change him? And after all, was not he, Peter,