CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH "DAWSON'S," AS THE GATE OF LIFE, IS PROVED A DISAPPOINTMENT


I

It was, of course, very strange that this should come so swiftly after the
meeting with the London gentleman--it was almost as though he had known
about it, because it was a first step towards that London that he had so
confidently promised. To Peter school meant the immediate supply of the
two things that he wanted more than anything in the world--Friendship
and Knowledge; not knowledge of the tiresome kind, Knowledge that had
to do with the Kings of Israel and the capital of Italy, but rather the
experience that other gentlemen of his own age had already gathered during
their journey through the world. Stephen, Zachary, Moses, Dicky, Mrs.
Trussit, old Curtis, even Aunt Jessie--all these people had knowledge,
of course, but they would not give it you--they would not talk to you as
though they were at your stage of the journey, they could not exchange
opinions with you, they could not share in your wild surmises, they
could not sympathise with your hatred of addition, multiplication, and
subtraction. The fellow victims at old Parlow's might have been expected
to do these things, but they were too young, too uninterested, too
unenterprising. One wanted real boys--boys with excitement and sympathy...
_real_ boys.

He had wanted it, far, far more terribly than any one had known. He had
sat, sometimes, in the dark, in his bedroom, and thought about it until
he had very nearly cried, because he wanted it so badly, and now it had