“You’re a decent kid,” said Humphrey. “I like you better than my brothers. I suppose you’ll forget me as soon as I’m gone.”
“I’ll never forget you,” said Jeremy. “Can’t you leave your family and be somebody else? Then you can come and stay with us.”
“Stay with a parson? Not much. You’ll see me again one day. I’ll send you a line from time to time and let you know where I am.”
Finally, they swore friendship. They exchanged gifts. Humphrey gave Jeremy a broken pocket-knife, and Jeremy gave Humphrey his silver watch-chain. They shook hands and swore to be friends for ever.
And then the final and terrible tragedy occurred.
It came, just as suddenly, as for a romantic climax it should have come.
On the afternoon that followed the friendship-swearing Humphrey did not appear at the accustomed place. Jeremy waited for several hours and then went melancholy home. At breakfast next morning there were those grown-up, mysterious allusions that mean that some catastrophe, too terrible for tender ears, is occurring.
“I never heard anything so awful,” said Aunt Amy.
“It’s so sad to me,” said Jeremy’s mother, sighing, “that people should want to do these things.”
“It’s abominable,” said Mr. Cole, “that they were ever allowed to come here at all. We should have been told before we came.”
“But do you really think——” said Aunt Amy.
Jeremy sat there, feeling as though everyone were looking at him. What had happened to Humphrey? He must go at once and find out.
He slipped off after breakfast, and before he reached the bottom of the downs, heard shouts and cries. He ran across the beach and was soon involved in a crowd of farmers, women, boys and animals all shouting, crying out and barking together. Being small he was able to worry his way through without any attention being paid to him; indeed, everyone was too deeply excited by what was happening in the yard of the farm to notice small boys. When at last he got to the gate and looked through, he beheld an extraordinary scene. Among the cobbles and the manure heaps and the filth many things were scattered—articles of clothing, some chairs and a table, some pictures, many torn papers. The yard was almost filled with men and women, all of them apparently shouting and screaming together. A big red-faced man next to Jeremy was crying over and over again: “That’ll teach him to meddle with our women.” “That’ll teach him to meddle with our women. . . .”