Читать книгу Paul the Courageous - Mabel Quiller-Couch - Страница 3

PAUL'S HOPES RISE

A few days later Paul returned to school, and Stella and Michael settled down to lessons at home with their governess. They missed their elder brother very much, for though he domineered over them a good deal, they looked up to him as a hero, and a very splendid fellow, and they felt sad and lonely when he went back to school.

At first Paul, too, felt very miserable, and out of spirits. When it came to leaving his home he felt more real sorrow for the trouble they were in than he had at all, and real shame for having behaved so crossly and unkindly about his disappointment, and he became filled with a great desire to work well, and make up in that way for his past behaviour. So the weeks sped by; half term came and went, and early in July came a letter from Stella. They were to go away for a summer holiday, after all, she wrote excitedly, and evidently impressed with the idea that she was conveying wonderful news. They were to go to Dartmoor. Father had taken rooms in a big farmhouse on the moors, and it was lovely; there were horses and wagons, and hay-fields and orchards, and big tors where they could go for picnics.

"Dartmoor!" exclaimed Paul, as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "What a place! What is there for me to do? Just go for walks with the kids, I s'pose; I'd quite as soon stay at home." And he sniffed scornfully, and went about all day in a bad temper.

"Dartmoor is a ripping fine place!" Paul had confided his woes to his chum, Dennis Rogers, and that was the response he met with. "I only wish I was going there this summer. We were there two years ago; oh, my, it was jolly! I wonder what part you are going to, and if you'll be anywhere near the convict prison."

Paul pricked up his ears.

"The convict prison," he cried eagerly. "I'd forgotten that that was down there. Oh, I do hope we go quite close to it. I'd like awfully to see the convicts. Did you ever see any of them? Were you near them?"

"See them! I should just think so. I saw a convict's funeral once, too; the coffin was carried by the convicts all in their prison clothes, with whacking great broad arrows over them."

"What were they like? Did they look like murderers? Did you see any of those that are in Madame Tussard's?" asked Paul, full of curiosity.

"Some of them were pretty bad-looking, but the rest were just like ordinary people. You'd never think from their faces, that they were murderers, and burglars, and forgers, and all that sort of thing. I felt awfully sorry for them, but my mater hurried me away, and wouldn't let me have a good look at them. I know one thing, I would have helped them to escape if they had tried to."

"I do hope we shall be in that part," said Paul, excitedly. "I'd give anything to see the prisoners and the prison. I say, did any escape while you were there?"

"No, 'twas hard luck. One got away in the winter after we left, and wasn't caught for a day or two; it was foggy, and that helped him, of course. Then there is otter-hunting in some of the rivers," went on Dennis, tiring of the subject of the convicts. "Oh, it's an awfully fine place! There are wild cattle on the moor too, and they are no end of excitement; they go for you like anything if you rile them. You are in luck's way, old chap. I wish I was going too, instead of to some silly place in Norway where there's nothing to do when you get there but walk. I hate being shut up in a stuffy steamer too. I'm ill all the time—so are most of the people—and I don't see where the fun comes in. But my people are set on it, so I suppose I've got to go. I don't want to, a bit."

"Don't you!" said Paul sarcastically, all his old disappointment returning. "I wish we could change places then. I think Dartmoor is awfully tame compared with Norway."

And then a hot discussion followed, each boy sticking up, of course, for his own favourite place.

But when, three weeks later, Paul travelled homewards, his disappointment was quite forgotten, and he was in the best of spirits, for it is beyond the power of any ordinary boy to feel morose and sulky the day his school breaks up and he goes home for his summer holiday; and when the family joined him at Slewbury station,—all except his father, who was to follow later,—and they journeyed on together, he was the life of the whole merry party.

"Mother," he exclaimed with sudden recollection, after the home news had been listened to and school news told, "what is the name of the place we are going to? Shall we be near the convict prison?"