f any of the boys, and of course
it happened that the very last one he spoke to was Harold, and that he
was also the one whom Billy liked least particularly of the whole lot.

'Oh, you are, are you?' was all he could find to say when Harold had
blushingly owned to his name. Then in manly tones Billy gave the order
about Harold's luggage and the carrier, said 'Come along!' and Harold
came.

Harold was a fattish boy with whitey-brown hair, and he was as soft and
white as a silkworm. Billy did not admire him. He himself was hard and
brown, with thin arms and legs and joints like the lumps of clay on
branches that the gardener has grafted. And Harold did not admire _him_.

There was little conversation on the way home; when you don't want to
have a visitor and he doesn't want to be one, talking is not much fun.
When they got home there was tea. Billy's mother talked politely to
Harold, but that did not make anyone any happier. Then Billy took his
cousin round and showed him the farm and the stock, and Harold was less
interested than you would think a boy could be. At last, weary of trying
to behave nicely, Billy said:

'I suppose there must be _something_ you like, however much of a muff
you are. Well, you can jolly well find it out for yourself. I'm going to
finish my kite.'

The silkworm-soft face of Harold lighted up.

'Oh, _I_ can make kites,' he said; 'I've invented a new kind. I'll help
you if you'll let me.'

Harold, eager, quick fingered, skilful, in the shed among the string,
and the glue, and the paper, and the bendable, breakable laths, was
quite a different person from Harold, nervous and dull, among the
farmyard beasts. Billy allowed him to help with the kite, and he began
to respect his cousin a little more.

'Though it's rather like a girl, being so neat with your fingers,' he
said disparagingly.

'I wish I'd got the proper sort of paper,' Harold said, 'then I'd make
my new patent kite that I've invented; but it's a very extra sort of
kind of paper. I got some once at a butter-shop in Bermondsey, but that
was in a dream.'

Billy stared.

'You must be off your chump,' he said; and he felt more sorry than ever
that his jolly country holiday was to be spoiled by a strange cousin,
who ought, perhaps, to be in a lunatic asylum rather than at a
respectable farm.

That night Billy was awakened from the dreamless sleep which blesses the
sort of boy he was to find Harold excitedly thumping him on the b