§ 8
After this incident the disposal of Joan ceased to be a topic for conversation between young Winterbaum and Peter, and presently young Winterbaum conveyed to Peter in an offhand manner that he adored Minnie Restharrow as the cleverest and most charming girl in the school. She was indeed absolutely the best thing to be got in that way. She was, he opined, cleverer even than Miss Murgatroyd. He was therefore, he intimated, in love with Minnie Restharrow. It was a great passion.
So far as Peter was concerned, he gathered, it might be.
All the canons of romance required that Peter, having fought for and won Joan, should thereupon love Joan and her only until he was of an age to marry her. As a matter of fact, having disposed of this invader of his private ascendancy over Joan, he thought no more of her in that relationship. He decided, however, that if young Winterbaum was going to have a sweetheart he must have one too, and mysterious processes of his mind indicated Sydney Sheldrick as the only possible person. It was not that Peter particularly wanted a sweetheart, but he was not going to let young Winterbaum come it over him—any more than he was going to let young Winterbaum be King of more than half of Surrey. He was profoundly bored by all this competitiveness, but obscure instincts urged him to keep his end up.
One day Miss Murgatroyd was expatiating to the mother of a prospective pupil upon the wonderful effects of coeducation in calming the passions. “The boys and girls grow up together, get used to each other, and there’s never any nonsense between them.”
“And don’t they—well, take an interest in each other?”
“Not in that way. Not in any undesirable way. Such as they would if they had been morbidly separated.”
“But it seems almost unnatural for them not to take an interest.”
“Experience, I can assure you, shows otherwise,” said Miss Murgatroyd conclusively.
At that moment two figures, gravely conversing together, passed across the lawn in the middle distance; one was a well-grown girl of thirteen in a short-skirted gymnasium dress, the other a nice-looking boy of ten, knickerbockered, bare-legged, sandalled, and wearing the art green blouse of the school. They looked the most open-air and unsophisticated children of modernity it was possible to conceive. This is what they were saying:
“Sydney, when I grow up I’m going to marry you. You got to be my sweetheart. See?”
“You darling! Is that what you have to tell me? I didn’t think you loved me a little bit.”
“I’m going to marry you,” said Peter, sticking to the facts of the case.
“I’d hug you. Only old Muggy is looking out of the window. But the very first chance I get I’ll kiss you. And you’ll have to kiss me back, mind, Peter.”
“Where some one can’t see us,” Peter stipulated.
“Oh! I love spooning,” said the ardent Sydney. “’Member when I kissed you before?...”
“The girls refine the boys and the whole atmosphere is just a family atmosphere,” Miss Murgatroyd was explaining at the window.