Well, good-bye. I hope you’re enjoying yourself and haven’t entirely forgotten your
Uncle.
P.S.—I promise you that the lid shall never be on the barrel when you’re there, and if you don’t get too fat, there’s room for two inside.
He read the letter through three times before finishing with it; then, sitting forward on the old wooden bench scarred with a thousand penknives, he went over the delicious details of it. How exactly Uncle Samuel realized the things that he would want to know! No one else in the family wrote about anything that was exciting or intriguing. Uncle Samuel managed in some way to make you see things. The studio, the sky with the little moon, the red apples, Hamlet flat on the floor, his head rigid, his eyes fixed; Aunt Amy shopping in Drymouth, Barbara tumbling downstairs. That whole world came towards him and filled the playground and blotted out the school, so that for a moment school life was unreal, shadowy, and did not matter. He sighed with happy contentment. Young though he was, he realized that great truth that one person in the world is quite enough. One human being who understands your strange mixture equalizes five million who think you are simply black, white or purple. All you want is to be reassured about your own suspicions of yourself. A devoted dog is almost enough, and one friend ample. Jeremy went in to dinner with his head in the air, trailing after him, like Peter Pan, one shadow of the world immediately around him, the world in which the school sergeant was carving the mutton at the end of the table so ferociously that it might have been the corpse of his dearest enemy, and the masters at the high table were getting fried potatoes and the boys only boiled, and Jeremy was not having even those because he had got to play football in an hour’s time; and the other world, where there was Aunt Amy’s eyelash high in the air, and the cathedral bells ringing, and Uncle Samuel painting cows. Jeremy would have liked to consider the strange way in which these two worlds refused to mingle, to have developed the idea of Uncle Samuel carving the mutton instead of the sergeant, and the sergeant watching the evening sky instead of Uncle Samuel, and why it was that these two things were so impossible! His attention was occupied by the fact that Plummy Smith, who was a fat boy, was sitting in his wrong place and making a “squash” on Jeremy’s side of the table, which led quite naturally to the game of trying to squeeze Plummy from both ends of the table into a purple mass, and to do it without Thompson noticing. Little pathetic squeals came from Plummy, who loved his food, and saw his mutton mysteriously whisked away on to some other plate, and knew that he would be hungry all the afternoon in consequence. He was one of those boys who had on the first day of his arrival, a year earlier, unfortunately confided to those whom he thought his friends that he lived with two aunts, Maria and Alice. His fate was sealed from the moment of that unfortunate confidence. He did not know it, and he had been in puzzled bewilderment ever since as to why the way of life was made so hard for him. He meant no one any harm, and could not understand why the lower half of his person should be a constant receptacle for pins of the sharpest kind. The point in this matter about Jeremy was that, as with Miss Jones years before, he could not resist pleasant fun at the expense of the foolish. He had enough of the wild animal in him to enjoy sticking pins into Plummy, to enjoy squeezing the breath out of his fat body, to enjoy seeing him without any mutton; and yet, had it been really brought home to him that Plummy was a miserable boy, sick for his aunts, dazed and puzzled, spending his days in an orgy of ink, impositions and physical pain, he would have been horrified that himself could be such a cad. He was not a cad. It was a fine day, he was in splendid health and spirits, he had had a letter from Uncle Samuel, and so he stuck pins into Plummy.
When the meal was over he walked down to the football ground with Riley, and told him about Uncle Samuel. He told Riley everything, and Riley told him everything. He never considered Riley as an individual human being, but rather as part of himself, so that if he were kicked in the leg it must hurt Riley too; and there was something in Riley’s funny freckled forehead, his large mouth, and his funny, clumsy way of walking, as though he were a baby elephant, that was as necessary to Jeremy and his daily life as putting on his clothes and going to sleep. He showed Riley the piece of paper that Uncle Samuel had sent to him. “By gosh!” said Riley, “that’s a pound.”
“It’s an awful pity,” said Jeremy, “that you are not in Little Dorm. Perhaps you could come in to-night. I’m sure Stokesley and Pug wouldn’t mind. We’re going to have sardines and marmalade and dough-nuts.”
“If I get a chance, I will,” said Riley; “but I don’t want to be caught out just now, because I’ve been in two rows already this week. Perhaps you could keep two sardines for me, and I’ll have them at breakfast to-morrow.”
“All right; I’ll try,” said Jeremy. He looked about and sniffed the air. It was an ideal day for football. It was cold, and not too cold. The hills above the football field were veiled in mist. The ground was soft, but not too soft. It ought to be a good game.
“Do you feel all right?” asked Riley.
They proceeded in the accustomed manner to test this. Jeremy hurled himself at Riley, caught him round the middle, tried to twine his legs round Riley’s, and they both fell to the ground. They rolled there like two puppies. Jeremy exerted all his strength to bring off what he had never yet succeeded in doing, namely, to turn Riley over and pin his elbows to the ground. Riley wriggled like a fish. Jeremy was very strong to-day, and managed to get one elbow down and was in a very good way towards the other when they heard an awful voice above them. “And what may this be?” They scrambled to their feet, flushed and breathless, and there was old Thompson staring at them very gravely in that way that he had so that you could not tell whether he were displeased or no.