(Peter was shocked and ashamed for Nobby.)
Then Nobby turned and saw Peter before Peter could hide away from him. He stopped crying at once, but there was his funny face all red and shiny on one side.
“Hullo, old Peter boy,” said Nobby. “I’m off. I’m going right away. Been fooled.”
So that was it. But hadn’t he Africa and lions and elephants and black men to go to, a great Real Play Nursery instead of a Nursery of Toys? Why make a fuss of it?
He came to Peter and lifted him up in his arms. “Good-bye, old Peter,” he said. “Good-bye, Peter. Keep off the copper punching.” He kissed his godson—how wet his face was!—and put him down, and was going off along the path and Peter hadn’t said a word.
He wanted to cry too, to think that Nobby was going. He stared and then ran a little way after his friend.
“Nobby,” he shouted; “good-bye!”
“Good-bye, old man,” Nobby cried back to him.
“Good-bye. Gooood-bye-er.”
Then Peter trotted back to the house to be first with the sad but exciting news that Nobby had gone. But as he came down from the green wicket to the house he looked up and saw his father at the upstairs window, gazing after Nobby with an unusual expression that perplexed him, and in the little hall he found his mother, and she had been crying too, though she was pretending she hadn’t. They knew about Nobby. Something strange was in the air, perceptible to a little boy but utterly beyond his understanding. Perhaps Nobby had been naughty. So he thought it best to change the subject, and began talking at once about a wonderful long bicycle with no less than three men on it—not two, Mummy, but three—that he had seen upon the highroad. They had thin white silk shirts without sleeves, and rode furiously with their heads down. Their shirts were blown out funnily behind them in the middles of their backs. They went like that!...