perceived that Tom was humming the same phrase again and again: ‘Some streets are longer than others. Some streets are longer than others.’
‘
The truth was that Tom was intoning a sentence from Henry’s prize essay on streets. Tom had read the essay and pronounced it excellent, and till this very moment on the pavement of Oxford Street Henry had imagined Tom’s verdict to be serious. He now knew that it was not serious.
Tom continued to chant, with pauses: ‘Some streets are longer than others…. Very few streets are straight…. But we read in the Bible of the street which is called Straight…. Oxford Street is nearly straight…. A street is what you go along…. It has a road and two footpaths.’
Henry would have given his penknife not to have written that essay. The worst of Tom was that he could make anything look silly without saying that it was silly—a trick that Henry envied.
Tom sang further: ‘In the times before the French Revolution the streets of Paris had no pavements …
‘I didn’t put “haughty,”’ Henry cried passionately.
‘Didn’t you?’ Tom said with innocence. ‘But you put “or even seriously injured.”’
‘Well?’ said Henry dubiously.
‘And you put “It was no infrequent occurrence.” Where did you steal that from, my bold buccaneer?’
‘I didn’t steal it,’ Henry asserted. ‘I made it up.’
‘Then you will be a great writer,’ Tom said. ‘If I were you, I should send a telegram to Tennyson, and tell him to look out for himself. Here’s a telegraph-office. Come on.’
And Tom actually did enter a doorway. But it proved to be the entrance to a large and magnificent confectioner’s shop. Henry followed him timidly.
‘A pound of marrons glaces,’ Tom demanded.
‘What are they?’ Henry whispered up at Tom’s ear.
‘Taste,’ said Tom, boldly taking a sample from the scales while the pound was being weighed out.
‘It’s like chestnuts,’ Harry mumbled through the delicious brown frosted morsel. ‘But nicer.’
‘They are rather like chestnuts, aren’t they?’ said Tom.
The marrons glaces were arranged neatly in a beautiful box; the box was wrapped in paper of one colour, and then further wrapped in paper of another colour, and finally bound in pink ribbon.
‘Golly!’ murmured Henry in amaze, for Tom had put down a large silver coin in payment, and received no change.
They came out, Henry carrying the parcel.
‘But will they do me any harm?’ the boy asked apprehensively.
The two cousins had reached Hyde Park, and were lying on the grass, and Tom had invited Henry to begin the enterprise of eating his birthday present.
‘Harm! I should think not. They are the best things out for the constitution. Not like sweets at all. Doctors often give them to patients when they are getting better. And they’re very good for sea-sickness too.’
So Henry opened the box and feasted. One half of the contents had disappeared within twenty minutes, and Tom had certainly not eaten more than two marrons.
‘They’re none so dusty!’ said Henry, perhaps enigmatically. ‘I could go on eating these all day.’
A pretty girl of eighteen or so wandered past them.
‘Nice little bit of stuff, that!’ Tom remarked reflectively.
‘What say?’
‘That little thing there!’ Tom explained, pointing with his elbow to the girl.
‘Oh!’ Henry grunted. ‘I thought you said a nice little bit of stuff.’
And he bent to his chestnuts again. By slow and still slower degrees they were reduced to one.
‘Have this,’ he invited Tom.
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Don’t want it. You finish up.’
‘I think I can’t eat any more,’ Henry sighed.
‘Oh yes, you can,’ Tom encouraged him. ‘You’ve shifted about fifty. Surely you can manage fifty-one.’
Henry put the survivor to his lips, but withdrew it.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll put it in the box and save it.’
‘But you can’t cart that box about for the sake of one chestnut, my bold buccaneer.’
‘Well, I’ll put it in my pocket.’
And he laid it gently by the side of the watch in his waistcoat pocket.
‘You can find your way home, can’t you?’ said Tom. ‘It’s just occurred to me that I’ve got some business to attend to.’
