all like this, especially when you haven't got much of your own either—”
“Between friends,” said Stephen slowly, swinging his leg backwards and forwards and making the bed creak under his weight, “there aren't any giving or taking—it's just common.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” said Peter hurriedly, frightened lest he should have hurt his feelings, “of course it's all right between you and me. But all the same I'm rather eager to be earning part of it.”
They were silent for a time. Bucket Lane too seemed silent and through their little window, between the black roofs and chimneys, a cluster of stars twinkled as though they had found their way, by accident, into a very dirty neighbourhood and were trying to get out of it again.
Peter was busy fishing for his thoughts; at last he caught one and held it out to Stephen's innocent gaze.
“It isn't,” he said, “like anything so much as catching a disease from an infectious neighbourhood. I think if I lived here with five thousand a year I should still be frightened. It's in the air.”
“Being frightened,” said Stephen rather hurriedly and speaking with a kind of shame, as though he had done something to which he would rather not own up, “is a kind of 'abit. Very soon, Peter, you'll know what it's like and take it as it comes.”
“Oh,” said Peter, “if it's that kind of being frightened—seeing I mean quite clearly the things you're frightened of—why, that's pretty easy. One of the first books I ever read—‘Henry Lessingham,’ by Galleon, you know, I've talked about him to you—had a long bit about it—courage I mean. He made it a kind of parable, countries you'd got to go through before you'd learnt to be really brave; and the first, and by far the easiest courage is the sort that you want when you haven't got things—the sort the Gambits want—when you're starving or out of a job. Well, that's I suppose the easiest kind and yet I'm funking it. So what on earth am I going to do when the harder business comes along? . . . Stephen, I'm beginning to have a secret and uncomfortable suspicion that your friend, Peter Westcott, is a poor creature.”
