‘Mother! mother! Look what I’ve found!’
There was a rush and a swirl of petticoats. The infant had seen the stars for the first time, and had some trouble in explaining the nature of his find. When it was known that he had discovered the solar system and its neighbouring fragment of the universe, there was a laugh, and he was left alone, humiliated.
‘I have made many equally valuable and original discoveries since then,’ said Paul Armstrong, and so went on staring down the canon, seeing nothing of what lay before him, but beholding his child-self so clearly that he seemed to be living over again the life of forty years ago.
The child was shy, dreamy, sensitive, inventive, and a liar. He and his brother Dick were together walking in the shabby High Street, and talking about cricket.
‘I’ll bet you haven’t seen what I’ve seen,’ said Paul. He was seven years old by now, breeched in corduroys, which had had time to grow rusty. The middle-aged man, sitting at his tent-door, smelt the odour of the new cords, and heard their disgusting whistle as he moved his limbs in them for the first time. Only the poorest boys went clothed in corduroy, and Paul and brother Dick were bitterly lowered in their own esteem when they were forced by motherly economy into that badge of social servitude. ‘I’ll bet you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.’
‘What have you seen? asked Dick.
He was rather a fatuous boy, with round, innocent eyes, easily opening at tales of marvel, and a temptation to a liar.
‘Why, when I was in Scotland three years ago with father,’ Paul began, ‘I saw the Highlanders play cricket.’ He had never in his life been a mile away from his native parish, and Dick knew that as well as he did, but it made no difference. ‘They wore kilts, and father wore a kilt, and had a feather in his bonnet, and top-boots like Robin Hood, all loose about the tops, and a bow and arrow. And he smoked a cigar, and gave me a whole lot of vesuvians to strike by myself behind a tent. You could smell vesuvians and cigars and sunshiny trod-on grass everywhere.’
‘Tell us about the Highlanders,’ said Dick.
‘They was all ten foot high,’ said Paul. ‘They wouldn’t have ‘em in the eleven without they was ten foot high.’