hey talked, and The Rat committed
things to memory. He was quick at it, and grew quicker every day.
They invented a game of remembering faces they passed. Both would learn
them by heart, and on their return home Marco would draw them. They
went to the museums and galleries and learned things there, making from
memory lists and descriptions which at night they showed to Loristan,
when he was not too busy to talk to them.

As the days passed, Marco saw that The Rat was gaining strength. This
exhilarated him greatly. They often went to Hampstead Heath and walked
in the wind and sun. There The Rat would go through curious exercises
which he believed would develop his muscles. He began to look less
tired during and after his journey. There were even fewer wrinkles on
his face, and his sharp eyes looked less fierce. The talks between the
two boys were long and curious. Marco soon realized that The Rat
wanted to learn--learn--learn.

"Your father can talk to you almost as if you were twenty years old,"
he said once. "He knows you can understand what he's saying. If he
were to talk to me, he'd always have to remember that I was only a rat
that had lived in gutters and seen nothing else."

They were talking in their room, as they nearly always did after they
went to bed and the street lamp shone in and lighted their bare little
room. They often sat up clasping their knees, Marco on his poor bed,
The Rat on his hard sofa, but neither of them conscious either of the
poorness or hardness, because to each one the long unknown sense of
companionship was such a satisfying thing. Neither of them had ever
talked intimately to another boy, and now they were together day and
night. They revealed their thoughts to each other; they told each
other things it had never before occurred to either to think of telling
any one. In fact, they found out about themselves, as they talked,
things they had not quite known before. Marco had gradually
discovered that the admiration The Rat had for his father was an
impassioned and curious feeling which possessed him entirely. It
seemed to Marco that it was beginning to be like a sort of religion.
He evidently thought of him every moment. So when he spoke of
Loristan's knowing him to be only a rat of the gutter, Marco felt he
himself was fortunate in remembering something he could say.

"My father said yesterday that you had a big brain and a strong will,"
he answered from his bed. "H