It may be that old Hermansson was also somewhat mistaken. It may be that callousness developed early in life may be one of the conditions of success in this world. It may be that daily and hourly contact with degraded humanity simply hardens a little Indian’s heart for life’s cruel warfare.
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Peter’s school report at the end of the term was, as usual, not good, and he was not promoted. Now he sat in the billiard room on the third floor grinding away in the summer holidays.
Peter sat drawing his fingers through his rough hair and bent over his book. We all know that struggle against an incurable lack of concentration, the bending very closely over an unfortunate text until the letters begin to swell and jostle each other out of line and shamelessly vanish in the blue.
Peter lifted his head, puffing as if he had been under water and could no longer hold his breath. But it was not only the common, boyish instinct to throw all to the winds and rush out to the day’s adventures in the forest and field. It was not only the healthy restlessness of a growing boy that was reflected in his face. He turned and twisted on his chair and looked about him, and secretly cast stealthy side-glances from beneath his unkempt shock of hair as if fearing that somebody stood behind him listening to his thoughts.
Not even when he was alone could he look anything straight in the face.
Now he jumped up and took a turn round the old billiard table covered by an old torn dust sheet. All round him in the dilapidated room the torn wallpaper was curling and the dry paint was peeling off the skirting boards and window frames. Peter stopped a moment in front of a blackboard that had once been the billiard marker, but which was now covered with his unsolved algebra problems. He made a weak effort, but then he flung away the chalk as if it had burnt his fingers, and rushed suddenly to the window and peeped out.
Since Old Hök’s time the billiard room had been generally called the conservatory. Its high, narrow fortress-like windows faced three ways, and from this high point one could look out over the whole of the Selamb estate. On a stand made of three worn-out cues stood a long, battered leather-covered telescope. It was here that Peter’s grandfather used to sit and spy on his people in order mercilessly to sweep down on the idle or the dishonest. You could still see his old focus marks on the brass tube of the telescope, and they had crept further and further out as he grew older and more short sighted.