Quentin de Ward was rather a nice little boy, but he had never been with
other little boys, and that made him in some ways a little different
from other little boys. His father was in India, and he and his mother
lived in a little house in the New Forest. The house--it was a cottage
really, but even a cottage is a house, isn't it?--was very pretty and
thatched and had a porch covered with honeysuckle and ivy and white
roses, and straight red hollyhocks were trained to stand up in a row
against the south wall of it. The two lived quite alone, and as they had
no one else to talk to they talked to each other a good deal. Mrs. de
Ward read a great many books, and she used to tell Quentin about them
afterwards. They were usually books about out of the way things, for
Mrs. de Ward was interested in all the things that people are not quite
sure about--the things that are hidden and secret, wonderful and
mysterious--the things people make discoveries about. So that when the
two were having their tea on the little brick terrace in front of the
hollyhocks, with the white cloth flapping in the breeze, and the wasps
hovering round the jam-pot, it was no uncommon thing for Quentin to say
thickly through his bread and jam:--
'I say, mother, tell me some more about Atlantis.' Or, 'Mother, tell me
some more about ancient Egypt and the little toy-boats they made for
their little boys.' Or, 'Mother, tell me about the people who think Lord
Bacon wrote Shakespeare.'
And his mother always told him as much as she thought he could
understand, and he always understood quite half of what she told him.
They always talked the things out thoroughly, and thus he learned to be
fond of arguing, and to enjoy using his brains, just as you enjoy using
your muscles in the football field or the gymnasium.
Also he came to know quite a lot of odd, out of the way things, and to
have opinions of his own concerning the lost Kingdom of Atlantis, and
the Man with the Iron Mask, the building of Stonehenge, the Pre-dynastic
Egyptians, cuneiform writings and Assyrian sculptures, the Mexican
pyramids and the shipping activities of Tyre and Sidon.
Quentin did no regular lessons, such as most boys have, but he read all
sorts of books and made notes from them, in a large and straggling
handwriting.
You will already have supposed that Quentin was a prig. But he wasn't,
and you would have owned this if you had seen him scampering through the
greenwood on his quiet New Forest pony, or setting snares for the
rabbits that _would_ get into the garden and eat the precious lettuces
and parsley. Also he fished in the little streams that run through that
lovely land, and shot with a bow and arrows. And he was a very good
shot too.
Besides this he collected stamps and birds' eggs and picture post-cards,
and kept guinea-pigs and bantams, and climbed trees and tore his clothes
in twenty different ways. And once he fought the grocer's boy and got
licked and didn't cry, and made friends with the grocer's boy
afterwards, and got him to show him all he knew about fighting, so you
see he was really not a mug. He was ten years old and he had enjoyed
every moment of his ten years, even the sleeping ones, because he always
dreamed jolly dreams, though he could not always remember what they
were.
I tell you all this so that you may understand why he said what he did
when his mother broke the news to him.
He was sitting by the stream that ran along the end of the garden,
making bricks of the clay that the stream's banks were made of. He dried
them in the sun, and then baked them under the kitchen stove. (It is
quite a good way to make bricks--you might try it sometimes.) His mother
came out, looking just as usual, in her pink cotton gown and her pink
sunbonnet; and she had a letter in her hand.
'Hullo, boy of my heart,' she said, 'very busy?'
'Yes,' said Quentin importantly, not looking up, and going on with his
work. 'I'm making stones to build Stonehenge with. You'll show me how to
build it, won't you, mother.'
'Yes, dear,' she said absently. 'Yes, if I can.'
'Of course you can,' he said, 'you can do everything.'
She sat down on a tuft of grass near him.
'Quentin dear,' she said, and something in her voice made him look up
suddenly.
'Oh, mother, what is it?' he asked.
'Daddy's been wounded,' she said; 'he's all right now, dear--don't be
frightened. Only I've got to go out to him. I shall meet him in Egypt.
And you must go to school in Salisbury, a very nice school, dear, till I
come back.'
'Can't I come too?' he asked.
And when he understood that he could not he went on with the bricks in
silence, with his mouth shut very tight.