Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/66

life, and it doesn’t leave much time for fooling round. . . . Funny! I haven’t spoken to what you’d call a lady since I was on the India with Mr. Robertson; that was three years ago. I've hardly spoken to any woman much, for the matter of that. I s’pose it’s easier for a boy than for a man. I’m not the size they want to kiss now-(more by token, I’m growing out of these clothes, and they were new in Sydney). . . . Well, Gaston Ste. Croix was tall. Now, I wonder how tall? He looked a giant to me, but I was such a little rat then. . . . Mother was tall too, but she was never strong. . . . And the last time I was in America she was here too, before we went over to Japan—Oh, my God! Oh—Mummy dear. . . .”

There would come a long pause, during which he did not think at all, and then he would pull himself together to face some such thoughts as these.

“If she had lived I’d be with them still. He’d never have dared to turn me out—she was always more afraid of him than I was, but she wouldn’t have let him. . . . Perhaps it’s as well she did die. He made her life just plain hell; she’s better where she is. If it was true that dead people could see what you’re doing, then I’d pray for her to be asleep all that Cairo time and the last year in New Zealand. . . . I’m so much older now that it doesn’t matter. . . .”

Once when he had been thinking about Bill he found himself saying, “It was good work—I liked it, but I’m going to be more than a drover—” and was startled at finding that he had waked a queer, long-unused echoing chord. He groped after its meaning, but without much success. “Now what on earth made me think that? I know. He said It would belong to me, but I can’t remember any name. My grandfather’s place—a house—a big house in England—with a rose-garden, mother often told me—But—how funny! Supposing I really had something of