We look at each other. This is no joke:
"Perhaps we had better wait with the letter till tomorrow," I say. "Or perhaps it would be best if we talked to Dirty ourselves, when we get back to town."
We both ponder over the matter and really don't know what to do.
Then my eyes surprise an indescribable smile on our mother's face. All a woman's incapacity to understand man's honesty is contained within that smile and I resent it greatly:
"Come," I say and give my hand to my little boy. "Let us go."
And we go to a place we know of, far away behind the hedge, where we lie on our backs and look up at the blue sky and talk together sensibly, as two gentlemen should.
XVI
My little boy is to go to school.
We can't keep him at home any longer, says his mother. He himself is glad to go, of course, because he does not know what school is.
I know what it is and I know also that there is no escape for him, that he must go. But I am sick at heart. All that is good within me revolts against the inevitable.