Outwardly Oswald said nothing.
‘You see’—Denny went on—‘I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is to do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn’t mind being hurt in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides, I wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don’t.’
The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.
‘I think you’re quite good enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll fetch back the others—no, they won’t laugh.’
And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy home somehow.
When they said this, as agreeably as they could, Denny said—
‘It’s all right—someone will give me a lift.’
‘You think everything in the world can be put right with a lift,’ Dicky said, and he did not speak lovingly.
‘So it can,’ said Denny, ‘when it’s your feet. I shall easily get a lift home.’
‘Not here you won’t,’ said Alice. ‘No one goes down this road; but the high road’s just round the corner, where you see the telegraph wires.’