To You, Mr Chips by James Hilton

desperately; but neither Mrs. Jones nor Fred seemed to understand. Fred said: ''Tis only Mickle--I wouldn't call it much of a mountain at all.'
    All at once Gerald realised that it didn't matter how they answered: it  was  the highest mountain, the highest in the world, and he was going to climb it, like the men in the snowstorm in his geography book.
    He put down his glass and walked to the doorway. 'I'm going up there,' he said.
    'Nay, you can't, you'd get lost on Mickle,' said Mrs. Jones.
    'But I want to see what's over the other side,' Gerald went on.
    'Take 'em both up, Fred, if they want,' Mrs. Jones then said. 'It'll be a bit o' fresh air for 'em.'
    Fred nodded and began to trudge slowly up the steep track, Gerald and Olive following. But after a little while Gerald scampered ahead, because he liked to think that nobody had ever climbed the mountain before. It was a dangerous thing to do, and only he, the famous mountaineer and engine-driver, dare risk it. Up, up, scrambling through bracken and heather; there were tigers, too, that you had to watch out for. His blood was racing as he reached the smooth green summit. The earth was at his feet, the whole earth, and over the other side, which he had been so curious about, a further mountain was to be seen--doubtless the second highest mountain in the world. Far below he could make out the tower of Browdley Church, with a tramcar crawling beside it like a red beetle.
    Suddenly he saw a halfpenny lying on the ground. 'Look what I've found!' he cried, triumphantly; then he lay down in the cool blue air and waited for the others to come up.
    Fred smoked in silence while Gerald talked to Olive.
    'What makes your father a Candidate?'
    'Because there's an election.'
    'But what's that?'
    'It means he has to get in.'
    'Where does he get in?'
    'In the house.'
    'Can't anybody get in?'
    'Only if you're a Candidate.'
    'Does he ever have a special train?'
    'A special train? I--I don't know.'
    'Don't know what a special train is? Do you like trains? When I came here there was a Four-Four-Nought on our train. Bet you don't know what that means.'
    No answer.
    'Are you afraid to touch a snail?'
    'No. And I'm not afraid to touch a bee, either. Even a bumble-bee. I don't suppose you've ever seen a bumble-bee.'
    'Oh yes, I have. It's like a piece of flying cat. I wouldn't be afraid to touch one. But I'll bet you'd be afraid to stand on the edge of the platform while the Scotch express dashed through at sixty miles an hour. I did that once. I stood right on the edge.'
    'Why?'
    'It was a test. None of the others could do it. My father couldn't. Or Uncle Richard. Even the stationmaster couldn't.'
    'Why not?'
    'Because the train was going too fast. It was really going at eighty miles an hour, not sixty.'
    Then there was a long silence, while Gerald lay back staring at the sky. He was very, very happy.
    When you are a child, everything you think and dream of has a piercing realness that never happens again; there is no blurred background to that stereoscopic clarity, no dim perspective to drag at the heart's desire. That little world you live in is the widest, the loveliest, and the sweetest; it can be the bitterest also.
    To Gerald, alone in his own vivid privacy, everything seemed miraculously right except the Other Candidate, who was miraculously wrong. The warm red room with the brass rail over the fireplace, and the greenhouse with the tricycle in it, and the parrot who never forgave him and whom he never forgave, were part of a secret intimacy in which Uncle Richard and Olive and Aunt Flo were partners (in descending order of importance), and over which, only a little lower than the angels, loomed the Candidate. Gerald could never catch a glimpse of the Candidate, though, after Uncle Richard's hint, he always looked out for him on the stairs. He knew that the Candidate lived in Uncle Richard's house, working in the front parlour with the door always closed, and sleeping in the front bedroom