CHAPTER VI—WHAT IS LOVE?
My secret was too big and beautiful to keep to myself. There was no one I could tell it to save the Bantam. But the Bantam had grown shy of me; he knew that within myself I had been laughing at him. He turned away when I tried to catch his eye, and bent with unaccustomed diligence above his lessons.
Not till after lunch did I get a chance to approach him. All the other boys had changed into flannels and had hurried off to the cricket-nets. I wandered into the empty playground and there found him seated alone in a corner. His knees were drawn up so that his chin rested on them; in his eyes was a far-away sorrowful expression. I halted before him.
“Bantam.”
He did not look up, but I knew by the twitching of his hands that he had heard.
“Bantam, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Slowly he turned his head. He was acting the part of Hamlet and I was vastly impressed. “Is it about Ruthita?”
“Partly. But it’s happened to me too, Bantam.”
“Wot?”
“A girl.”