"Hsh!" Ingpen stopped him in an excited whisper. "Don't disturb them for anything in the world!"
Silence followed.
Edwin crept away like a scout towards a swing which he had arranged for his friend George before he became the husband of George's mother. He climbed into it and over the wall could just see three boys' heads in the yard illuminated by a lamp in the back-window of the cottage. Tertius Ingpen joined him, but immediately climbed higher on to the horizontal beam of the swing.
"Who are they?" Ingpen asked, restraining his joy in the adventure.
"The one on the right's my stepson. The other big one is my sister Clara's child, Bert. I expect the little one's old Clowes', the gravedigger's kid. They say he's a regular little parson--probably to make up for his parents. I expect they're out somewhere having a jollification."
"Well," Ingpen breathed. "I wouldn't have missed this for a good deal." He gave a deep, almost soundless giggle.
Edwin was startled--as much as anything by the extraordinary deceitfulness of George. Who could possibly have guessed from the boy's demeanour when his Aunt Clara mentioned Bert to him, that he had made an outrageous rendezvous with Bert that very night? Certainly he had blushed, but then he often blushed. Of course, the Benbows would assert that George had seduced the guileless Bert. Fancy them hunting the town for Bert at that instant! As regards Peter Clowes, George, though not positively forbidden to do so, had been warned against associating with him--chiefly because of the bad influence which Peter's accent would have on George's accent. His mother had said that she could not understand how George could wish to be friendly with a rough little boy like Peter. Edwin, however, inexperienced as he was, had already comprehended that children, like Eastern women, have no natural class bias; and he could not persuade himself to be the first to inculcate into George ideas which could only be called snobbish. He was a democrat. Nevertheless he did not like George to play with Peter Clowes.
The small Peter, with uplifted face and clasped hands, repeated urgently, passionately:
"O God! We all three on us want ye to send George Edwin Clay'anger a two-bladed penknife. Now lads, kneel, and all three on us together!"
He stood between the taller and better-dressed boys unashamed, fervent, a born religionist. He was not even praying for himself. He was praying out of his profound impersonal interest in the efficacy of prayer.