“Won’t you come out on the lake with us?”
“What have you got a sailor’s suit on for, then?”
The boy could not answer. He was a prisoner of the roses. He was a poor little land sailor, and the two sunburnt sailors jeered at him mercilessly.
“You’re a beastly coward,” called Manne. “I have ridden the legs off a horse and I have thrashed my tutor. You are a beastly coward.”
Then the boy in white stepped out on to the stage.
“My name is Percy,” he said with a wan, little smile, “and I am not a coward.”
“Now, let us see who can splash the other most!” cried Manne, and Percy was wet through at once.
“Now you will be spanked when you get home.”
“No, but I shall have to go to bed. And then the doctor will come, of course.”
At this stage in their acquaintance Stellan suddenly checked Manne’s arrogance and changed his tactics. He had suddenly come to think of all the fine things visible through the railings round Stonehill.
“Take off your coat and spread it out on the seat and it will soon dry,” he said.
Percy obeyed. After a moment’s reflection Stellan continued, “So you never get a thrashing?”
“No,” said Percy with something of a sigh.
“Without dinner?” asked Percy astonished, “they stuff me with food.”
“Perhaps you are allowed to eat as much as you like in the hothouses,” he mumbled, almost shyly.
“Of course,” answered Percy with indifference.
“Yes, come tomorrow, both of you, and we’ll have fruit juice and biscuits first, and then go into the hothouses.”
It was in this way Stellan penetrated beyond the high, white fence round Stonehill. From the beginning he tried to imitate the aristocratic indifference of the “china doll” to all the good things to eat. Except, of course, when he thought nobody was looking, and then he gobbled up all he could. Worldly wisdom and fine manners are all very well, but we are only human after all....
Yes, all this had happened the year before. Now he was cut off from all that splendour, because of the rotten old boat, and the gardener’s tarred punt he was ashamed to go in.
Stellan was already walking away from the pier, where the water glittered and beat so mockingly against the wet boards, when it suddenly struck him that at Ekbacken old Hermansson had a smart little craft that was decorated every Sunday with a fine display of streamers in the stem, and a flag in the stern.