"I fancy you are mistaken," he observed.

XIV

IN WHICH TOMMY CONVERSES WITH THE PALE BOY

A sky of stolid grey had communicated a certain spirit of melancholy to the country-side--a spirit not wholly out of keeping with Tommy's mood.

The holidays were nearly over. The doctor was busy, the poet had a cold, Madge had been sent away to school, and Tommy, for the nonce, felt a little at a loss to know how to occupy these last mournful days of freedom.

As he tramped, a trifle moodily, down the lane, a point of light against a dark corner of the hedge caught his eye, and further examination revealed the pale boy, smoking a cigarette.

Tommy had not yet aspired to tobacco, and for a moment felt a little resentful.

But the memory of last week's battle restored his equanimity, and, indeed, brought with it a little complacent contempt for the pale boy and his ways.

"Hullo," said Tommy, pulling up in front of his reposing foe, and not sorry to have some one to talk to.

The pale boy looked at him coldly.

"Well," he observed, cheerlessly.

Tommy sat down on the gra.s.s.

"I say, let's forget about all that," he said.

The pale boy puffed away in silence.

"Let's forget; you--you'd probably have whopped me, you know, if you'd done some boxing at our place. You've a much longer reach than me, an'--an' you got me an awful nasty hit in the chest, you know."

The pale boy looked at him gloomily.

"I don't profess to know much about fighting," he said, with some dignity. "I think it's jolly low."

For a few minutes they sat in silence, then,

"Where do you go to school?" asked Tommy.

"I don't go anywhere; I've got a tutor."

"Oh!"

"You see, I'm not at all strong."

"Bad luck. You--ought you to smoke, if you're--if your const.i.tution's rocky, you know?"

The pale boy knocked the ashes off his cigarette.

"I find it very soothing," he said. "Besides, it's all right, if you smoke good stuff. I wouldn't advise fellows who didn't know their way about a bit to take it up."

The pale boy spoke with an air of superiority that awed Tommy a little.

"How--how did you come to know all about it?" he asked.

"Oh--just knocking about town, you know," replied the other, carelessly.

Tommy sighed.

"I hardly know anything about London," he said.

The pale boy looked at him, pityingly.

"I've lived there all my life," he said, "Dormanter Gardens, in Bayswater--one of the best neighbourhoods, you know."

Tommy racked his memory.

"I was in London, at Christmas, with a sort of aunt-in-law," he said.

"She lives in Eaton Square, I think it is--somewhere near Maskelyne & Cook's."

"I haven't heard of it," said the pale boy. "But London's so jolly big that it's impossible to know all of it, and I've spent most of my time in the West End."

Tommy was silent, but the pale boy seemed at home with his subject.

"I suppose you don't know the Cherry House," he continued. "It's an awful good place to feed in--near the Savoy, you know. Reggie, he's my cousin, takes me there sometimes. He always goes. He says there are such d.a.m.ned fine girls there. I don't care a bit about 'em, though."

The pale boy smoked contemplatively.

"I think it's awful rot, thinking such a beastly lot about girls, and all that sort of thing, you know, don't you?" said Tommy.

The pale boy nodded.

"Rather," he said. "I agree with dad. He says there's only one thing worth bothering about down here."

"What's that?"

"Money," snapped the pale boy, looking at Tommy, between narrowed eyelids. "I'm going to be a financier when I'm old enough to help dad."

Tommy stretched himself lazily.

"I'd rather be strong," he said.

The pale boy looked at him, curiously.

"What a rum chap you are. What's that got to do with it?"

Tommy lay back on the gra.s.s, and stared up at the pa.s.sing clouds.