"Not they," laughed the Parson. "He was plump as a little pig. They'd be kind to him because he wasn't right—superstition, you see. Kept him to bring em luck, probably. A kind of idol."
The boy in the blue jersey was coming up the hill towards them, slobbering at the mouth. His hands were in his pockets, and he lolloped along on his toes.
"Oi druv her back," he announced with complacent cunning. "She was creepin in on us, sloy-loike."
His face was that of a babe. Clearer eyes Kit had never seen, nor a more perfect mouth. But for the ears, large and flap, it might have been the face of a cherub, poised on the gawky body of fifteen. The expression, by no means vacant, was of slow and staring interest. Certainly this was no congenital idiot. Probably some chance blow on the head in infancy had arrested mental growth. The flesh had gone on; the mind had stopped. A baby-soul was sheathed in the body of a boy.
The two lads were much of a height, and much of an age. But what a difference between them!
The one was limp as a lolling flower, the other alert as a sword, and as keen. Experience had written nothing on the face of the simpleton. All there was blank as the moon. The haggard cheeks and anxious eyes of the other told that he had already drunk deep of the bitter waters of life.
Blob was staring at Kit with the solemn interest of a babe.
Then he pointed a finger.
"Boy!" he bleated.
"Call me 'sir'!" ordered Kit imperiously. "And take your hands out of your pockets when you talk to me."