The Young Clementina Read Free Page B

did not talk much about the traditions of his family, but his pride in them was a living force.
    There were very few houses of the better type within reasonable driving distance of Hinkleton, and those few were childless. Garth and I became inseparable companions. We played together in the Parsonage garden and in the woods surrounding the Manor; we sailed down the River Hinkle (which meandered lazily through the Manor grounds) in a little tub of a boat which had belonged to Garth’s father when he was a boy. Marvelous adventures we had—some real and some imaginary. The woods were filled with the creatures of our play—lions and tigers, Red Indians and crocodiles, King Arthur’s Knights and Robin Hood’s Merry Men, brigands and pirates all had their turn. The woods of Hinkleton provided suitable backgrounds for every play that caught our fancy; we knew every path; we had discovered the best trees to climb. The whole place was a happy hunting ground for Garth and me.
    Scarcely a day passed when we did not meet. The path linking the Parsonage and the Manor was well worn. It started from a small wooden gate in the hedge beyond the lawn and wound through fields and a wood of mixed trees, it climbed a wooded hill, where the local gray rock peeped out through the soil and descended into the grounds of the Manor on the other side. On the top of the hill there was a pile of rocks—big gray igneous boulders they were—and this was our favorite meeting place. How often I have sat there on the topmost boulder looking out over the treetops at the glorious spread of fields and woods and pasture land that lay below waiting for Garth to come! How often have I hurried up the hill to find Garth sitting in the same spot, waiting for me!
    I suppose the hill must have had some local name—if so I never knew it—we called it “Prospect Hill” from the hill so named in Swiss Family Robinson , a book we both adored. We read and reread this amazing work until we almost knew it by heart and the characters became our friends.
    Prospect Hill and the Swiss Family Robinson , how the names bring back the past! I can see Garth now—a small, thin figure in a Norfolk suit, with thick, black hair—sitting in a niche of rock on Prospect Hill bent double over our worn and dog-eared copy of the Swiss Family Robinson . He would sit like that for hours, reading solidly, while I—less sedentary by nature—climbed about the rocks or dabbled happily in the little spring which oozed out beneath a boulder. I did not mind his absorption, for he was always conscious of my presence however deeply buried he might be; sometimes he would lift his head and call out “Char, Char, where are you? Listen to this,” and would read out, in his shrill, boyish voice, some passage in the great work which especially appealed to him or which he thought might “do for a game.” The only time that Garth and I fell out was when Tommy Hatchett came to spend a month at the Parsonage. He was the son of an old college friend of father’s and his parents were abroad, so father offered to have him and give him a little coaching in the holidays. Tommy was a complete contrast to Garth—a round-faced, snub-nosed schoolboy, very frank and jolly and full of mischief. He was the same age as Garth, but bigger and stronger. Tommy was quite ready to be friendly and to join in all our games, but Garth resented his advent. It was a clear case of two being company and three none. I was too young to realize that Garth was jealous of Tommy; I could not understand why Garth went off by himself and refused to join in the games. All I could see was that Garth had been a splendid playmate, and now he was not.
    We had it out one morning when Tommy had been caught by father and incarcerated in the study to do some Latin prose.
    â€œWhy won’t you play properly now?” I asked Garth, with the uncompromising directness of