"Nasty place to leave the rails," said I, glancing over the parapet upon the green tree-tops fifty feet below us."
"I was thinking that," said he, and a queer tremor in his young voice made me glance at him sharply. Then suddenly I understood—or thought I did.
"You, at any rate, are pretty well insured," said I.
"Twenty thousand pounds, and a little over: the coupons cost four and twopence altogether, and then at the end of the journey you can use up all the reading."
"Wonderful!" I kept a serious face. "And I suppose all this time you've been staring at me, amazed by the recklessness of your elders."
He flushed slightly. "Have I been staring? I beg your pardon, I'm sure: it's a trick I have. I begin thinking of things, and then—"
"Thinking, I suppose, of how it would feel to be in a collision, or what it would be like to leap such a parapet as that and find ourselves dropping—dropping—into space? But you shouldn't, really. It isn't healthy in a boy like you: and if you'll listen to one who has known what nerves are, it may too easily grow to mean something worse."
"But it isn't that—exactly," he protested; "though of course all that comes into it. I'm not a—a funk, sir! I was thinking more of the —of what would come afterwards, you know."
"Oh dear!" I groaned to myself. "It's worse than ever: here's a little prig worrying about his soul. I shouldn't advise you to trouble about that, either," I said aloud.
"But I don't trouble about it." He hesitated, and stumbled into a burst of confidence. "You see, I'm no good at games—athletics and that sort of thing—"