Читать книгу The Boy in the Bush онлайн

48 страница из 75

People were always trying to "do things" to you. Why couldn't they leave you alone? Dirty cads to sing "My Ain Folk," and then stare in your face to see how it got you.

But life was a matter of endurance, with possible revenge later on.

When at last he got home and could go to bed, he felt he had gained a brief respite. There was no lock to the door—so he put the arm-chair against it, for a barricade.

And he felt he had been once more sold. He had thought he was coming to a wild and woolly world. But all the way out he had been forced to play the gentlemanly son of his father. And here it was hell on earth, with these women let loose all over you, and these ghastly concerts, and these hideous meals, and these awful flimsy, choky houses. Far better the Agricultural College. Far better England.

He was sick with homesickness as he flung himself into bed. And it seemed to him he was always homesick for some place which he had never known and perhaps never would know. He was always homesick for somewhere else. He always hated where he was, silently but deeply.