“I’ve got a hundred and seven soldiers,” said young Winterbaum. “And six guns that shoot.”
Joan was surprised and shocked to hear that Peter had five hundred soldiers.
“Each of my soldiers, each one, counts as a thousand men,” said young Winterbaum, getting ahead again.
Then the first bell rang and suspended the dispute. But Peter went down to the school with a worried feeling. He wished he had thought of claiming all Surrey as his kingdom first. It was a lamentable oversight. He was disposed to ask the eldest Sheldrick girl whether young Winterbaum really had a right to claim all the Weald. There was a reason in these things....
Young Winterbaum had an extraordinary knack of accentuating possessions. Joan and Peter were very pleased and proud to have bicycles; the first time they arrived upon them at the school young Winterbaum took possession of them and examined them thoroughly. They were really good bicycles, excellent bicycles, he explained, and new, not second-hand; but they were not absolutely the best sort. The best sort nowadays had wood rims. He was going to have a bicycle with wood rims. And there ought to be a Bowden brake in front as well as behind; the one in front was only a spoon brake. It was a pity to have a spoon brake; it would injure the tyre. He doubted if the tubing was helical tubing. And the bell wasn’t a “King of the Road.” It was no good for Peter to pretend it had a good sound, “the King of the Road” had a better sound. When young Winterbaum got his bicycle his bell was going to be a “King of the Road, 1902 pattern.”...
Young Winterbaum was always doing this with things, bringing them up into the foreground of life, grading them, making them competitive and irritating. There was no getting ahead of him. He made Peter feel that the very dust in the Winterbaum dustbin was Grade A. Standard I. while The Ingle-Nook was satisfied with any old makeshift stuff.
Young Winterbaum’s clothes were made by Samuelson’s, the best boys’ tailor in London; there was no disputing it because there was an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph that said as much; he was in trousers and Peter had knickerbockers; he wore sock suspenders, and he had his name in gold letters inside his straw hat. Also he had a pencil-case like no other pencil-case in the school. He was always proposing a comparison of pencil-cases.
His imagination turned precociously and easily to romance and love and the beauty of women. He read a number of novelettes that he had borrowed from his sister’s nurse. He imparted to Peter the idea of a selective pairing off of the species, an idea for which A Midsummer Night’s Dream had already prepared a favourable soil. It was after he had seen Joan dance her dance when that play was performed and heard the unstinted applause that greeted her, that he decided to honour her above all the school with his affections. Previously he had wavered between the eldest Sheldrick girl because she was the biggest, tallest and heaviest girl in the school (though a formidable person to approach) and little Minnie Restharrow who was top in so many classes. But now he knew that Joan was “it,” and that he was in love with her.
But some instinct told him that Peter had to be dealt with.
He approached Peter in this manner.