A boy is probably of
considerable interest to himself, and a man looks back at his own boyhood
with some pathos. But in his actuality a boy has very little to commend
him to the toleration of other human beings. Tom was very well, as boys
go; but now his contribution to the common enjoyment was to venture as
near as possible to all perilous edges; to throw stones into the water,
and to make as if to throw them over precipices on the people below; to
pepper his father with questions, and to collect cumbrous mementos of the
vegetable and mineral kingdoms. He kept the carriage waiting a good five
minutes, while he could cut his initials on a band-rail. "You can come
back and see 'em on your bridal tower," said the driver. Isabel gave a
little start, as if she had almost thought of something she was trying to
think of.
They occasionally met ladies driving, and sometimes they encountered a
couple making a tour of the island on foot. But none of these people were
young, and Basil reported that the Three Sisters were inhabited only by
persons of like maturity; even a group of people who were eating lunch to
the music of the shouting Rapids, on the outer edge of the last Sister,
were no younger, apparently.
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