Now we will begin with him.
II
Samuel Edward Wilkinson, when I first knew him, was a small boy of twelve who, in the privacy of the back garden of a small provincial grammar-school, ate tarts and apples which he never shared with his school-fellows. He was the last of a large family—I think his mother succumbed to the strain of bearing him, the tenth or eleventh—and he had the look of a starved fox which is not quite certain where the nearest hen-roost is. The costume of small boys in those days—the early forties—did not suit him; the tassel of his peaked cap was too much dependent upon his right eyebrow, and the left leg of his nankeen trousers was at least an inch and a half higher than its corresponding member.
"Poskitt," he said to me, the first time that I ever indulged in any real private conversation with him, "what shall you do when you leave Doctor Scott's?"
"Go home," said I.
He was eating one of his usual jam-tarts at the time, and he looked at me sideways over a sticky edge of it.
"Poskitt—what's your father?" he asked.
"My father's a farmer—but it's our own land," said I.
He finished his tart—thoughtfully. Then he took out a quite clean handkerchief and wiped the tips of his fingers on it. He looked round, more thoughtfully than before, at the blank walls of Doctor Scott's back garden. I was sensible enough even at that age to see that he was regarding far-away things.
"My father," he said, after an obvious cogitation, "is a butcher. He makes a lot of money, Poskitt. But there are eleven of us. I am the eleventh. When I leave school——"