is, and if Denny did not quail then Oswald does not know what
quailing is either.

For when Oswald took the shoe off he naturally chucked it down and gave
it a kick, and a lot of little pinky yellow things rolled out. And
Oswald looked closer at the interesting sight. And the little things
were _split pease_.

"Perhaps you'll tell me," said the gentle knight, with the politeness of
despair, "why on earth you've played the goat like this?"

"Oh, don't be angry," Denny said; and now his shoes were off, he curled
and uncurled his toes and stopped crying. "I _knew_ pilgrims put pease
in their shoes--and--oh, I wish you wouldn't laugh!"

"I'm not," said Oswald, still with bitter politeness.

"I didn't want to tell you I was going to, because I wanted to be better
than all of you, and I thought if you knew I was going to you'd want to
too, and you wouldn't when I said it first. So I just put some pease in
my pocket and dropped one or two at a time into my shoes when you
weren't looking."

In his secret heart Oswald said, "Greedy young ass." For it _is_ greedy
to want to have more of anything than other people, even goodness.

Outwardly Oswald said nothing.

"You see," Denny went on,--"I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is
to do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn't mind being
hurt in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides,
I wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don't."

The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.

"I think you're quite good enough," he said. "I'll fetch back the
others--no, they won't laugh."

And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But
Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see
that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy
home somehow.

When they said this, as agreeably as they could, Denny said:

"It's all right--some one will give me a lift."

"You think everything in the world can be put right with a lift," Dicky
said, and he did not speak lovingly.

"So it can," said Denny, "when it's your feet. I shall easily get a lift
home."

"Not here you won't," said Alice. "No one goes down this road; but the
high-road's just round the corner, where you see the telegraph wires."

Dicky and Oswald made a sedan-chair and carried Denny to the high-road,
and we sat down in a ditch to wait. For a long time nothing went by but
a brewer's dr