Over this his mother looked at him, "Wouldn't you like to go on, for the fun of it, Neale?" she asked him rather urgently. Neale's father took his cigar out of his mouth to hear Neale's answer.
"For the fun of it!" said Neale, stupefied at the idea. His parents exchanged glances and shook their heads, beaten.
"Oh, of course you don't have to!" his mother assured him hastily. His father put his cigar back in his mouth.
CHAPTER XII
In June 1899 when Hadley Prep. unlocked its grim doors and spewed forth the fifteen-year-old Neale for his third vacation, he did not as he had always done before, go at once with Mother to West Adams and the saw-mill. The invariable program of his journey there, Mother's two weeks' stay with him to get him settled, her going on to visit vague relatives of her own elsewhere in Massachusetts, and her return to spend the rest of the summer with Father, was upset by the news from the West Adams Crittendens. Jenny, the hired girl, had been to visit friends in Troy, and had fallen ill on her return. The doctor thought it might be typhoid. Certainly they did not want a boy visitor bothering around, until the matter was settled and they knew whether they were in for a long siege.
The Crittendens like all methodical people were quite at a loss when circumstances interfered with their routine. If there was one part of Neale's year the rightness of which they did not doubt, it was the summer spent in the country where his father had grown up. Now they were confronted with a perfectly new aspect of the problem of what to do with him. They solved it by not doing anything for the present. Mrs. Crittenden went off to visit the usual relatives in Massachusetts, delicate old ladies, whose nerves could not hold out against the idea of a great ramping boy; and Neale was left temporarily with his father to wait developments in West Adams.
The first days of liberty were sweet enough, after the strain of examinations. Neale loafed or rode his wheel (he had a new 24-inch frame bicycle now) at random up to Hudson Heights, and beyond on the Palisades. But less than a week of this was enough. He tried to amuse himself with baseball again, but it was not as he remembered it. The three years he had been at Hadley Prep. had separated him from his old friends. They were no longer to be found. Some were at work, some had moved away. The boys playing ball seemed absurdly young. The vacant lots themselves were absurdly small and rough. How could he have played there? He gave the thing up and moped.
What was there to do? He got on his wheel again and went out over the Plank Road as far as Passaic, swung left through Montclair, the Oranges, out to Elizabeth and home through Newark. Home was just as dull as he had left it. Neale was bored to desperation, and on a chance went into the parlor and opened the book-case. He was no great reader. In his own room there was a fair collection of Henty, G. Manville Fenn and Harry Castleman, but none of these seemed worth re-reading. He didn't suppose these grown-up books in the library could be worth anything, but he took down a volume to see.
"Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place over-grown with nettles was the churchyard ... and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.