The Ordeal of Richard Feverel | Page 8

the
beat of him at that game. I say!" and a sharp thought drew Ripton's
ideas nearer home, "I wonder whether my nose is as bad as he says!
Where can I see myself?"
To these exclamations Richard was deaf, and he trudged steadily
forward, facing but one object.
After tearing through innumerable hedges, leaping fences, jumping
dykes, penetrating brambly copses, and getting dirty, ragged, and tired,
Ripton awoke from his dream of Farmer Blaize and a blue nose to the

vivid consciousness of hunger; and this grew with the rapidity of light
upon him, till in the course of another minute he was enduring the
extremes of famine, and ventured to question his leader whither he was
being conducted. Raynham was out of sight. They were a long way
down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools,
yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen;
the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at
leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling
as in the first loneliness of creation; uncooked things that a famishing
boy cannot possibly care for, and must despise. Ripton was in despair.
"Where are you going to?" he inquired with a voice of the last time of
asking, and halted resolutely.
Richard now broke his silence to reply, "Anywhere."
"Anywhere!" Ripton took up the moody word. "But ain't you awfully
hungry?" he gasped vehemently, in a way that showed the total
emptiness of his stomach.
"No," was Richard's brief response.
"Not hungry!" Ripton's amazement lent him increased vehemence.
"Why, you haven't had anything to eat since breakfast! Not hungry? I
declare I'm starving. I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry bread and
cheese!"
Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated a similar
demonstration of the philosopher.
"Come," cried Ripton, "at all events, tell us where you're going to
stop."
Richard faced about to make a querulous retort. The injured and
hapless visage that met his eye disarmed him. The lad's nose, though
not exactly of the dreaded hue, was really becoming discoloured. To
upbraid him would be cruel. Richard lifted his head, surveyed the
position, and exclaiming "Here!" dropped down on a withered bank,

leaving Ripton to contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new move
was a worse perplexity.
CHAPTER III
Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes, not written
or formally taught, but intuitively understood by all, and invariably
acted upon by the loyal and the true. The race is not nearly civilized,
we must remember. Thus, not to follow your leader whithersoever he
may think proper to lead; to back out of an expedition because the end
of it frowns dubious, and the present fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a
comrade on the road, and return home without him: these are tricks
which no boy of spirit would be guilty of, let him come to any
description of mortal grief in consequence. Better so than have his own
conscience denouncing him sneak. Some boys who behave boldly
enough are not troubled by this conscience, and the eyes and the lips of
their fellows have to supply the deficiency. They do it with just as
haunting, and even more horrible pertinacity, than the inner voice, and
the result, if the probation be not very severe and searching, is the same.
The leader can rely on the faithfulness of his host: the comrade is sworn
to serve. Master Ripton Thompson was naturally loyal. The idea of
turning off and forsaking his friend never once crossed his mind,
though his condition was desperate, and his friend's behaviour that of a
Bedlamite. He announced several times impatiently that they would be
too late for dinner. His friend did not budge. Dinner seemed nothing to
him. There he lay plucking grass, and patting the old dog's nose, as if
incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger was. Ripton took
half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at last flung himself down beside
the taciturn boy, accepting his fate.
Now, the chance that works for certain purposes sent a smart shower
from the sinking sun, and the wet sent two strangers for shelter in the
lane behind the hedge where the boys reclined. One was a travelling
tinker, who lit a pipe and spread a tawny umbrella. The other was a
burly young countryman, pipeless and tentless. They saluted with a nod,
and began recounting for each other's benefit the daylong-doings of the
weather, as it had affected their individual experience and followed

their prophecies. Both had anticipated and foretold a bit of rain before
night, and therefore both welcomed the wet with satisfaction. A
monotonous betweenwhiles kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony
with the still