The devils! I'll have 'em under next
year."
"That's not the way--" Bobby tried timorously to explain.
"Oh, yes, it is.... Anyhow it's my way. I wonder what there is about me
that makes people hate me so."
"People don't."
"Yes, they do. At home, here--it's all the same. I'm always having to fight
about something, always coming up against things."
"I suppose it's your destiny," said Bobby. "You always say it's to teach
you pluck."
"That's what an old chap I knew in Cornwall said. But why can't I be let
alone? How I loved that bit last year when the fellows liked me--only the
decent things never last."
"It'll be all right later," Bobby answered, thinking that he had never seen
anything finer than the way Peter had taken that afternoon. "In a way," he
went on, "you fellows are lucky to get a chance of standing up against that
sort of thing; it's damned good practice. Nobody ever thinks I'm worth
while."
"Well," said Peter, throwing a clod of dark, scented earth into the air
and losing sight of it in the black wall about him--"Here's to next year's
battle!"
CHAPTER VII
PRIDE OF LIFE
I
Peter never saw Dawson's again. When the summer holidays had run some three
weeks a letter arrived stating, quite simply and tersely that, owing to
the non-payment by evading parents of bills long overdue and to many other
depressing and unavoidable circumstances Mr.
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