we _will_.
Why should we be chucked out and left outside people's doors, just
because they're tired of us? The thing that matters is that we're not
tired of them.... To-morrow, Thomas, you and I are going down to a place
called Astleys, in Berkshire, to visit some friends of ours. If they
don't want us, they can just lump us; good for them. Why should they
always have only the things they want? Be ready at nine, old man, and
we'll catch a train as soon after that as may be."

Thomas laughed, thinking it a splendid plan. He had never seen Astleys in
Berkshire, but he knew it to be a good place, from Peter's voice when he
mentioned it.

"But I don't want to excite you so late at night," said Peter, "so don't
think any more about it, but go to sleep, if you've finished that milk.
Does your head ache? Mine does. That's the worst of weak heads; they
always ache just when things are getting interesting. But I don't care;
we're going to have things--things to like; we're going to get hold of
them somehow, if we die in gaol for it; and that's worth a headache or
two. Someone says something about having nothing and yet possessing all
things; it's one of the things with no meaning that people do say, and
that make me so angry. It ought to be having nothing and _then_
possessing all things; because that's the way it's going to be with us.
Good night, Thomas; you may go to sleep now."

Thomas did so; and Peter lay on the sofa and gazed at the daffodils in
the brown jars that filled the room with light.

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW LIFE

Peter, with Thomas over his shoulder, stepped out of the little station
into a radiant April world. Between green, budding hedges, between
ditches where blue violets and joyous-eyed primroses peered up out of wet
grass, a brown road ran, gleaming with puddles that glinted up at the
blue sky and the white clouds that raced before a merry wind.

Peter said, "Do you like it, old man? Do you?" but Thomas's heart was too
full for speech. He was seeing the radiant wonderland he had heard of; it
crowded upon him, a vivid, many-splendoured thing, and took his breath
away. There were golden ducklings by the grassy roadside, and lambs
crying to him from the fields, and cows, eating (one hoped) sweet grass,
with their little calves beside them. A glorious scene. The gay wind
caught Peter by the throat and brought sudden tears to his eyes, so long
used to looking on grey streets.

He climbed over a