The boy started at his greeting, looked up, and a smile of recognition changed his face so absolutely that the schoolmaster felt a queer tightening in the muscles of his throat.
“I don’t get my pocket-money till a Friday,” the boy explained. “I couldn’t come before.”
“Well, now you are here, let’s have a chat together,” the schoolmaster said genially. “We both like this place, let’s tell each other the reasons why, and see if they’re the same.”
He sat down beside the boy, just out of reach of the muddy boots. The boy, his magazine still held open on his knees, surveyed his neighbor with dark, mournful eyes. Now that the smile had ceased to lighten his face, the schoolmaster was shocked at the sharpness of the thin cheekbones, the hollows and the blue shadows under the solemn eyes.
“I can’t tell you why I like it,” said the boy, “’cept p’r’aps because it’s so quiet, no one ever talks here, and there’s no women.”
“But women can come here if they like,” the schoolmaster objected.
“They never do like, not when I’m here,” the boy exclaimed eagerly. “I’ve been here every week for months and months and I’ve never seen one.”
“But why do you object to women?” the schoolmaster persisted. “We should be in a poor case without them, most of us.”
“I don’t object to them,” the boy said wearily; “it’s them objects to us, and they do talk so—talk and talk and talk about their sufferings.”
“Sufferings?” the schoolmaster repeated.