She laid her hand on his arm. “But—but didn’t you ever have any?”
He answered cheerfully, not at all sorry for himself, “Nope. Not that I remember.”
She glanced at her brother. “Peter and I’ve always been together.”
Peter added, “So that’s why you thought girls cried for nothing? You don’t know anything about them. I shouldn’t have been angry.”
The boy winked joyfully. “Oh, don’t I know anything! Leave that to the Faun Man. I know just as much as I want to. But say, I’d have liked to have had your sister for my sister. I really would have.”
Kay leant over his shoulder as he knelt before the fire. “If I were your sister, d’you know what I’d do for you? I’d tell you not to climb trees and, if you did do it, I’d mend your clothes for you.”
He told them something of his history as they sat at table. How he’d left England with his brother when he was so little that he couldn’t remember. How he’d lived on a cattle ranch and knew how to ride anything. He tried to make them understand the freedom and the solitariness of his life in those wide stretches, where there weren’t any street lamps but only stars, and where one gazed on green-gray grass for miles and never saw a single house. And he told them of the places he had been to—the queerly natural ghost corners of the earth, Alaska, Mexico and the South Sea Islands. Every now and then his imagination would gallop away with him. Then he’d twist his head and stoop forward, as if listening for the first expression of doubt. Before it came, he would try to forestall it by saying, “You know, that last part’s not really.”
When he had said it several times Kay laughed softly. The boy looked up, a little offended. “What is it?”
Her eyes were dancing with happiness. “You’re—you’re a very pretence person, aren’t you? Peter and I, we’re pretence persons. We’re always going to one place and telling ourselves we’re going somewhere else.”
The boy sank his head between his hands. His words came timidly. “It makes one happy to pretend, especially when one’s always been lonely. It’s like climbing a tall tree—it belongs to anyone up there.” He turned slowly, staring at his guests. They wondered what was in his mind. At last he said, “I wish—I wish you’d call me Harry. And please don’t tell me where you come from. Let’s be pretence persons—— I’d like to be your friend.”