In the version of the incident the strain of truth was sufficiently clear to allow the fat boy to approve of it. He didn't want to tell a lie, or to get Tom Whitelaw to tell a lie; but sport having been the object with which he had stolen away on that winter's afternoon, it was easy to persuade himself that he had got it. Before Tom went away Guy Ansley understood that he would figure to his parents not as a victim but as something of a tough.
"Gee, I wish I was you," he grinned at Tom, who stood with his hands on the doorknob.
"Me!" Tom was never so astonished in his life. His eyes rolled round the room. "How do you think I live?"
"Oh, live! That's nothing. What I'd like to do is to rough it. If they'd let me do that I shouldn't be—I shouldn't be wrapped up in fat like a mummy in—in whatever it is they're wrapped up in. You can get away with anything on looks."
Sincere as was this tribute, it meant nothing to Tom Whitelaw, looks being no part of his preoccupations. What, for the minute, he was thinking about was that nobody in the world seemed to be quite satisfied. Here he was envying Guy Ansley his down quilt and his comfortable chairs, while Guy was envying him the rough-and-tumble of privation.
"I shouldn't look after him too much," he said to the young sister whom, on coming downstairs, he found waiting at the front door. "There's nothing wrong with him, except that he's a little stout. He's got lots of pluck."
Her face glowed. The glow brought out its intelligence. The intelligence set into action a demure, mysterious charm, almost oriental.
"That's just what I always say, and no one ever believes me. Mother makes a baby of him."
"If he could only fight his own way a little more...."