He was not lonely on these excursions. Companionship had never in the Harfrey schools been such a pleasure that he missed anything in having to do without it. Rather, he enjoyed the freedom to be himself, to wear no mask, to have no part to play. It was only when alone like this that he understood how much of his thought and effort was spent in dancing to other people's tunes. In the Tollivant home he could never, like the other children, speak or act without a second thought. As a State ward it was his duty to commend himself. To commend himself he was obliged to think twice even before venturing on trifles. He had formed a habit of thinking twice, of rarely being spontaneous. By himself in this homey pasture he felt the relief of one who has been balancing on a tight rope at walking on the ground.
When he had climbed the bars Geraldine, who was down the hill and near the spinney, had lifted her head and swung her tail in recognition. Not being impatient, she went on with her browsing, leaving him a few minutes' liberty. Among the heartsease and the mallows he flung himself down, partly because he was tired and partly that he might think. With so much to think about thought came without sequence. It centered soon on what he was to be.
Of one thing he was certain; he didn't want to be a market gardener. Not but that he enjoyed the open-air life and the novelty of closeness to the soil. Like the whole Quidmore connection, it was good enough for the time. All the same, it was only for the time, and one day he would break away from it. How, he didn't ask. He merely knew by his intuitions that it would be so.
He was going to be something big. That, too, was intuitive conviction. What he meant by big he was unable to define, beyond the fact that knowledge and money would enter into it. He was interested in money, not so much for what it gave you as for what it was. It was a queer thing when you came to think of it. A dollar bill in itself had no more value than any other scrap of paper; and yet it would buy a dollar's worth of anything. He turned that over in his mind till he worked out the reason why. He worked out the principle of payment by check, which at first was as blank a mystery as marital relations. When newspapers came his way he studied the reports of the stock exchange, much as a savage who cannot read scans the unmeaning hieroglyphs which to wiser people are words. He did make out that railways and other great utilities must be owned by a lot of people who combined to put their money into them; but daily fluctuations in value he couldn't understand. When he asked his adopted father he was told that he couldn't understand it, though he knew he could.
Long accustomed to this answer as to the bewilderments of life, he rarely now asked anything. If he was puzzled he waited for more data. Even for little boys things cleared themselves up if you kept them in your mind, and applied the explanation when it came your way. The point, he concluded, was not to be in a hurry. There were the spiders. He was fond of watching them. They would sit for hours as still as metal things, their little eyes fixed like jewels in a ring. Then when they saw what they wanted one swift dart was enough for them. So it must be with little boys. You got one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow; but you got everything in time if you waited and kept alert.
By waiting and keeping alert he would find out what he was to be. He had reached his point when he saw Geraldine pacing up the hill toward the pasture bars. She was giving him the hint that certain acknowledged rites were no longer to be put off.
He had lowered the bars, over which she was stepping delicately, when he saw his father come tearing down the road, going toward Bere, with all the speed his shuffling gait could put on. Used by this time to erratic actions on Quidmore's part, he was hardly surprised; he was only curious. He was more curious still when, on drawing nearer, the man seemed in a panic. "Looks as if he was running away from something," was the lad's first thought, though he couldn't imagine from what.
"Is anything the matter?"
From panic the indications changed to those of surprise, though the voice was as velvety as ever.
"Oh, so it's you! I thought it was Diggory. What did you—what did you—do with that powder?"