And I went out of his room, feeling sure that for some time I would be very good.

Sec.7

I always left Radley’s room, feeling that I could blast a way through every mountain.  And it was not long after he had received my mother’s letter with its allusion to my lack of a father, that he addressed himself to a bigger mountain than any of these little trumpery hills that you have watched me conquering.  He invited me to his room one evening, and sat me in an armchair opposite him:  and then he talked, while I watched the fire getting redder, as the room grew darker.  Soon he came unhesitatingly to a subject that I was just at an age to understand.  He spoke so fearlessly as to be quite unrestrained and natural.  Nevertheless, I was glad that the room was getting darker, as I felt that my cheeks were red and hot.  And when he said:  “You mustn’t mind my talking to you like this,” I could only reply:  “Oh, it’s all right, sir.”

But, once again, I left his room feeling that, though already I had had my reverses in the moral contest of which he spoke, I would win through in the end.

CHAPTER VI

AN INTERLUDE

In the summer holidays of that year I received a letter from Doe inviting me to spend a few days with him at his Cornish home on the Fal.  Radley, he told me, was already his guest.

There was some excitement the morning I left home for this adventure into the West Country.  My mother had clothed me in a new dark-blue suit.  Her son must look his best, she said.  She insisted on my wearing a light-blue tie, for “it matched the colour of my eyes.”  I rather opposed this on the ground that it was “all dashed silly.”  But she disarmed me by pointing out that I was her doll and not my own, and the only one she had had since she was my age, which was a century ago—­a terrible lie, as she looked about twenty-seven.  She carried her point with a kiss, called me her Benjamin, tied the tie very gingerly, and subsequently disarranged it completely by hugging me to say good-bye, as though I were off for a lifetime.

Alone in my corner seat I was rolled over the Trail of Beauty that the line of the Great Western follows.  And I watched the telegraph wires switchbacking from post to post, as we sped along.

When we steamed into Falmouth station, I easily distinguished Radley’s majestic figure standing on the platform, with Doe actually hanging on his arm—­a thing I would never have dared to do.  In fact, I guessed that Doe was doing it for my benefit.  Our young host was in a light grey suit that would have brought tears to the eyes of Kensingtowe’s administrators, who stipulate for dark garments only:  and, evidently, he had been allowed to dictate to his tailor, for the suit was an exact copy of one that Radley had worn during the previous term.  He looked more than ever like his nickname, “the Gray Doe.”