Part 12 (1/2)
”From that big greengrocer's opposite Barnet Church,” answered Dan.
”Have a bit?”
”You told me you hadn't any more money,” retorted Dudley, in reproachful tones.
”No more I had,” replied Dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end of his pocket-knife.
”You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear,” argued Dudley, accepting.
”Didn't buy it.”
”Do you mean to say you stole it?”
”Yes.”
”You're a thief,” denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away a pip.
”I know it. So are you.”
”No, I'm not.”
”What's the good of talking nonsense. You robbed an orchard only last Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache.”
”That isn't stealing.”
”What is it?”
”It isn't the same thing.”
”What's the difference?”
And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. ”Stealing is stealing,” he would have it, ”whether you take it off a tree or out of a basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a piece?”
The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all had a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so. It did not agitate him in the least.
To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me, and sometimes from him I received a.s.sistance and sometimes confusion.
The yearly examination was approaching. My father and mother said nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how much I had endeavoured. I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make others believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of school.
”Are you going in for anything, Dan?” I asked him. We were discussing the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.
I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to ask it of me.
”They're not giving away anything I particularly want,” murmured Dan, in his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it must be confessed, not worth their cost.
”You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?” he asked next, as I expected.
”I mean to have a shot at the History,” I admitted. ”Wish I was better at dates.”
”It's always two-thirds dates,” Dan a.s.sured me, to my discouragement.
”Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that chap Raleigh was born.”