“Look at him,” said Cousin Oswald as Peter regarded the world with unwinking intelligence from behind an appreciated bottle; “the Luck of him. He’s the Heir of the Ages. Look at this room and this house and every one about him.”
Dolly remarked foolishly that Peter was a “nittle darum. ’E dizzerves-i-tall. Nevything.”
“The very sunshine on the wall looks as though it had been got for him specially,” said Cousin Oswald.
“It was got for him specially,” said Dolly, with a light of amusement in her eyes that reminded him of former times.
This visit was a great occasion. It was the first time Cousin Oswald had seen either Arthur or Peter. Almost directly after he had learnt about Dolly’s engagement and jerked out his congratulations, he had cut short his holiday in England and gone back to Central Africa. Now he was in England again, looked baked and hard, and his hair, which had always been stubby, more stubby than ever. The scarred half of him had lost its harsh redness and become brown. He was staying with his aunt, Dolly’s second cousin by marriage, Lady Charlotte Sydenham, not ten miles away towards Tonbridge, and he took to bicycling over to The Ingle-Nook every other day or so and gossiping.
“These bicycles,” he said, “are most useful things. Wonderful things. As soon as they get cheap—bound to get cheap—they will play a wonderful part in Central Africa.”
“But there are no roads in Central Africa!” said Arthur.
“Better. Foot tracks padded by bare feet for generations. You could ride for hundreds of miles without dismounting....”
“Compared with our little black babies,” said Cousin Oswald, “Peter seems immobile. He’s like a baby on a lotus flower meditating existence. Those others are like young black indiarubber kittens—all acrawl. But then they’ve got to look sharp and run for themselves as soon as possible, and he hasn’t.... Things happen there.”
“I wonder,” said Arthur in his lifting tenor, “how far all this opening up of Africa to civilization and gin and Bibles is justifiable.”