“Oh, that rot! What silly idiots we were! Such rot!”
And yet, at the back of him, at the back of his too-direct gaze, his laughter, there was something. Oh, yes, there was something. She was certain of that.
Deep, deep, hidden away at the back of him, at the back of that most imperturbable of all reserves, a boy’s reserve, he remembered, felt as he had always felt. He shut her out of it, that was all: her—Rhoda.
At the end of a year they ceased to talk of the Forest; all those far-back things dropped away from their intercourse. To outward seeming their love for the countryside, their strange, unyouthful interest in geology, the age-buried world, seemed a thing of the past.
Hector had a bicycle now: he was often away for hours at a time. He never even spoke of where he had been, what he had been doing. It was always: “Nowhere in particular; nothing in particular.”
Then, two years later, upon just such a breathless mid-summer day, he burst in upon his sister, his face crimson with excitement.
“I’ve found it! I never gave up—never for a moment! I pretended—I thought you thought it rot—were drawing me on—but it’s there. We were right. It’s there—there! Quick! quick! Now the tide’s just almost full out.... Oh, by Jingo! to think I’ve found it! Rhoda, hurry up—quick!” He was dancing with impatience.
“I can ride the bike—you on the step,” breathed Rhoda, and snatched up a hat.
They flew. The village shot past them: the flat country swirled like a top. At last they came to a place where there was a tiny rag of torn handkerchief tied to a stick stuck upright in the ground. Here they left the road, laid the bicycle in a dry ditch, and cut away across the marsh; guided by more signals—scraps of cambric, then paper; towards the end, one every ten yards or less, until Rhoda wondered how in the world had the boy curbed himself to such care!
Then—there it was.