The two boys didn't guess, and Eric said, to enlighten them, "Will you have a whiff, Monty?"
"A whiff! Oh! I see you've been wasting your tin on cigars--alias, rolled cabbage-leaves. Oh fumose puer!"
"Well, will you have one?"
"If you like," said Montagu, wavering; "but I don't much care to smoke."
"Well, I shall, at any rate," said Eric, keeping off the wind with his cap, as he lighted a cigar, and began to puff.
They strolled on in silence; the smoking didn't promote conversation, and Russell thought he had never seen his friend look so ridiculous, and entirely unlike himself, as he did while strutting along with the weed in his mouth. The fact was, Eric didn't guess how much he was hurting Edwin's feelings, and he was smoking more to "make things look like the holidays," by a little bravado, than anything else. But suddenly he caught the expression of Russell's face, and instantly said--
"O, I forgot, Edwin; I know you don't like smoking;" and he instantly flung the cigar over the hedge, being really rather glad to get rid of it. With the cigar, he seemed to have flung away the affected manner he displayed just before, and the spirits of all three rose at once.
"It isn't that I don't like smoking only, Eric, but I think it wrong--for us I mean."
"O, my dear fellow! surely there can't be any harm in it. Why everybody smokes."
"It may be all very well for men, although I'm not so sure of that. But, at any rate, it's wrong and ridiculous in boys. You know yourself what harm it does in every way."