‘My dear fellow, I only want to follow you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. I’m not joking at all. Since I’ve known you a great deal has changed. You’ve made me see things in a different way. It’s perhaps rather extraordinary, but it’s true. You’re so—what shall I call it?—good.’
‘But you don’t see them in my way,’ Graham objected.
‘I know—I know. I dare say not even in a way you’d care for. But still there is a great difference from the old way. Only I can’t exactly tell you what it is, nor how long it will last. Probably just as long as our friendship. That is why I want to keep close to you. I’ve been friends with other boys than you, you see,—even with some of those who try now to make you drop me. Look at those two rows of trees, Graham, running side by side for a little, and then suddenly branching off in opposite directions.’
‘Well?’
‘Well: they are like our destinies.’
Graham glanced at him. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked a little strangely.
Brocklehurst smiled. ‘That is, if our friendship is ever to be broken,’ he explained.