The stranger smoked in silence for a little, and Tommy sat down beside him on the grass.
"I'm not one," he repeated.
"Shakespeare says we are all players in a great drama, of which the world is the stage, you know. I don't quite know if that's altogether true, but I'm pretty sure that we're all of us tramps, going it with more or less zest, it is true, and in different costumes—but tramps at the last, every one of us."
Tommy looked at him with puzzled eyes.
"What a rum way of talking you have—something like the poet, only different somehow."
"The poet?"
"Down there at Camslove."
"Ah, I remember. I read some of his things; pretty little rhymes, too, if I remember rightly."
"They're jolly good," said Tommy, warmly.
"A friend of yours, eh?"