Edmund Bertram's Diary

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Tom was eager to try out his new horse’s paces and so we rode out together this morning, jumping walls and hedges, until he was satisfied he had made a good bargain.

‘Did you ever see such an animal?’ he asked me, as he reined in his horse. ‘I would never have been able to get him so cheap if Travis had not lost so heavily at cards. But Travis never learns. A man with such infernal luck should stick to spil ikins.’ He looked around him, letting his eyes wander over our father’s fields, down to the river at the bottom of the hill, and across the water to the woods beyond, but he did not see them as I did, as something to which he belonged. ‘I tell you, Edmund, I am longing to be free,’ he said. ‘I am tired of the country.’

‘We will soon be back at Eton.’

‘I am tired of Eton, too.’

‘It is not long now before we go to Oxford.’

‘Ay. Only one year more, and then I will be out in the world, instead of rotting away at school. I mean to have a fine time of it, I can tell you.’

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