[17] [17] "Sure you'd rather have a kite than anything else?" Tommy hesitated, and then said of course he'd rather have a hairyplane, but he supposed the stranger couldn't. To which the stranger startlingly replied, "Oh, couldn't I, my boy! Father got a horse and trap?" he went on. And from that moment the most wonderful four days of Tommy's life moved forward majestically without pause or let. To drive into Eastbourne with the gentleman—rather slow the old horse was, but it was the best trap—to hold the reins outside important and unusual shops, including the Eastbourne Motor-Car Company and the telegraph-office at the station; to be taken to dinner at a fine hotel with flowers in all the windows, and real waiters dressed exactly like the gentlemen who sang at the school concert, white ties and all—or just like the butler at Mr. Ferney's who had the training-stables—and such things to eat as Tommy "never did." The horse and trap were put up at Mr. Pettigrew's Livery and Bait Stables, in itself an act of unheard-of daring and extravagance. And after dinner the stranger got a motor-car—a real private one—none of your red flags and mustn't ride on the front seat, where, in fact, he and the[18] stranger did, with great dash and daring, actually ride. And they went to Pevensy and Hurstmonceau and Hastings, and the stranger told Tommy stories about the places, so that history was never quite itself again to Tommy. Then back to Eastbourne, to call again at the unusual shops, as well as at one of the more usual character, where the stranger bought toffee and buns and cake and peppermint creams; to get a parcel from the station, and so home round the feet of the downs in the pleasant-colored evening, with the dust white on the hedges, and the furze in flower, and the skylarks singing "fit to bu'st theirselves," as Tommy pointed out when the stranger called his attention to the little, dark, singing specks against the clear sky, the old white horse going at a spanking pace. No one would have believed he had it in him, compared to what he was in the morning; and drawing up very short and sharp in front of the porch—no driving into the yard and just calling for Robert—and father himself coming out to take the reins. Oh, that was a day! [18] To the stranger, also, whose name, it will surprise you little to learn, was
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