Peter’s hostility to schools was removed very slowly. The lessons at High Cross had scarred him badly, and about Miss Mills clung associations of the utmost dreariness. Still it was Oswald’s instinct to consult the young man on his destiny.
“There’s a lot you don’t know yet,” said Oswald.
“Can’t I read it out of books?” asked Peter.
“You can’t read everything out of books,” said Oswald. “There’s things you ought to see and handle. And things you can only learn by doing.”
Oswald wanted Peter to plan his own school.
Peter considered. “I’d like lessons about the insides of animals, and about the people in foreign countries—and how engines work—and all that sort of thing.”
“Then we must find a school for you where they teach all that sort of thing,” said Oswald, as though it was merely a question of ordering goods from the Civil Service Stores....
He had much to learn yet about education.
But Oswald was still only face to face with the half of his responsibility.
One morning he found Peter at the schoolroom table very busy cutting big letters out of white paper. Beside him was a long strip of Turkey twill from the dressing-up box that The Ingle-Nook had plagiarized from the Sheldricks. “I’m getting ready for Joan,” said Peter. “I’m going to put ’Welcome’ on this for over the garden gate. And there’s to be a triumphal arch.”
Hitherto Peter had scarcely betrayed any interest in Joan at all, now he seemed able to think of no one else, and Oswald found himself reduced abruptly from the position of centre of Peter’s universe to a mere helper in the decorations. But he was beginning to understand the small boy by this time, and he took the withdrawal of the limelight philosophically.
When Aunt Phyllis and Joan arrived they found the flagged path from the “Welcome” gate festooned with chains of coloured paper (bought with Peter’s own pocket-money and made by him and Oswald, with some slight assistance and much moral support from Aunt Phœbe in the evening) to the door. The triumphal arch had been achieved rather in the Gothic style by putting the movable Badminton net posts into a sort of trousering of assorted oriental cloths from the dressing-up chest, and crossing two heads of giant Heracleum between them. Peter stood at the door in the white satin suit his innocent vanity loved—among other rôles it had served for Bassanio, Prince Hal, and Antony (over the body of Cæsar)—with a face of extraordinary solemnity. Behind him stood Uncle Nobby.