Edward grinned, mollified. “All right, let’s go.”

They followed a barely discernible path through the wood. It was a little cooler under the leaves of the beech and elm trees, and Micky began to feel better. “What will you do this summer?” he asked Edward.

“We usually go to Scotland in August.”

“Do your people have a shooting-box there?” Micky had picked up the jargon of the English upper classes, and he knew that “shooting-box” was the correct term even if the house in question was a fifty-room castle.

“They rent a place,” Edward replied. “But we don’t shoot over it. My father’s not a sportsman, you know.”

Micky heard a defensive note in Edward’s voice and pondered its significance. He knew that the English aristocracy liked to shoot birds in August and hunt foxes all winter. He also knew that aristocrats did not send their sons to this school. The fathers of Windfield boys were businessmen and engineers rather than earls and bishops, and such men did not have time to waste hunting and shooting. The Pilasters were bankers, and when Edward said “My father’s not a sportsman” he was acknowledging that his family was not in the very highest rank of society.

It amused Micky that Englishmen respected the idle more than people who worked. In his own country, respect was given neither to aimless nobles nor to hardworking businessmen. Micky’s people respected nothing but power. If a man had the power to control others — to feed or starve them, imprison or free them, kill them or let them live — what more did he need?

“What about you?” Edward said. “How will you spend the summer?”

Micky had wanted him to ask that. “Here,” he said. “At school.”

“You’re not staying at school all through the vacation again?”