Читать книгу The Boy in the Bush онлайн

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Why did Jack find his father slightly fantastic? Why was that gentleman in uniform who appeared occasionally, very resplendent and somehow very "good," why was he always unreal and fantastic to the little boy left at home in England? Why was he even more fantastic when he wore a black coat and genteel grey trousers? He was handsome and pleasant, and indisputably "good." Then why, oh, why should he have appeared fantastic to his own little boy, who was so much like him in appearance?

"The spitten image!" one of his nurses had said. And Jack never forgave it. He thought it meant a spat-upon image, or an image in spit. This he resented and repudiated absolutely, though it remained vague.

"Oh, you little sinner!" said the same nurse, half caressingly. And this the boy had accepted as his natural appellation. He was a little sinner. As he grew older, he was a young sinner. Now, as he approached manhood, he was a sinner without modification.

Not, we repeat, that he was ever able to understand wherein his sinfulness lay. He knew his father was a "good man."—"The colonel, your father, is such a good man, so you must be a good little boy and grow up like him."—"There is no better example of an English gentleman than your father, the general. All you have to do is to grow up like him."