Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/71

 aloof as ever, and was considered “a sidey devil, but jolly plucky, by Gad.”

And for himself he got at any rate the more continued companionship of Cards, who languidly, and, perhaps a younger Sir Willoughby Patterne “with a leg,” admired his muscle.

Finally, towards the end of the term, Peter and Bobby Galleon may be seen sitting on a high hill. It is a Sunday afternoon in spring, and far away there is a thin line of faintly blue hills. Nearer to view there are grey heights more sharply outlined and rough, like drawing paper—painted with a green wood, a red-roofed farm, a black church spire, and a brown ploughed field. Immediately below them a green hedge hanging over a running stream that has caught the blue of the sky. Above them vast swollen clouds flooding slowly with the faint yellow of the coming sunset, hanging stationary above the stream and seeming to have flung to earth some patches of their colour in the first primroses below the hedge. A rabbit watches, his head out of his hole.

The boys' voices cut the air.

“I say, Bobby, don't you ever wonder about things—you never seem to want to ask questions.”

“No, I don't suppose I do. I'm awfully stupid. Father says so.”

“It's funny your being stupid when your father's so clever.”

“Do you mind my being stupid?”

“No—only I'd like you to want to know things—things like what people are like inside—their thinking part I mean, not their real insides. People like Mother Gill and old Binns and Prester Ma: and then what one's going to do when one's grown up—you never want to know that.”

“No, it'll just come I suppose. Of course, I shan't be clever like the governor.”

“No, I don't think you will.”

Once again: “Do you mind my being so stupid, Peter?”

“No—I'm awfully stupid too. But I like to wonder about things. There was once a man I met at home with