Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/54

 This was immensely reassuring, and Peter felt very much cheered. “You will make all the friends of your life there. You will learn to be a man. Dear me!” The Old Gentleman coughed. “I don't know what I would have done without school. You must have courage, you know,” he added.

“I heard some one say once,” said Peter, “that courage is the most important thing to have. It isn't life that matters, but courage, this man said.”

“Bless my soul,” the Old Gentleman said, “how old are you, boy.”

“Twelve—nearly thirteen,” answered Peter.

“Well, the more you see of boys the better. You might be forty by the way you talk. You want games and fellows of your own age, that's what you want. Why I never heard of such a thing, talking about life at your age.”

Peter felt that he had done something very wrong, although he hadn't the least idea of his crime, so he turned the conversation.

“I should like very much,” he said, “to hear about your school if you wouldn't mind.”

Then the Old Gentleman began in the most wonderful way, and to hear him talk you would imagine that school was the paradise to which all good boys were sent—a deliriously delightful place, with a shop full of sweets, games without end, friends galore, and a little work now and then to prevent one's being bored.

Peter listened most attentively with his head against the Old Gentleman's very warm coat, and then the warmth and the movement of the train caused the voice to swim further and further away into distance.

"Bless my soul!” Peter heard as though it had been whispered at the end of the train.

“Here's Exeter, young man. Your father said you were to change here.”

A rubbing of eyes, and behold a stout guard in front of the door and no sign of the Old Gentleman whatever, but when he felt for his ticket in his side pocket he found also a glittering sovereign that had certainly not been there when lie went asleep.

All this was very encouraging, and Peter followed the