"He's just round that corner," said Jimmy.
"He's simply rolling in money. He doesn't know what to do with it.
He's been building a horse-trough and drinking fountain with a
bust of himself on top. Why doesn't he build a private
swimming-bath close to his bed, so that he can just roll off into it
of a morning? I wish I was rich; I'd soon show him ,"
"That's a sensible wish," said Gerald. "I wonder we didn't think of
doing that. Oh, criky!" he added, and with reason. For there, in the
green shadows of the pine-walk, in the woodland silence, broken
only by rustling leaves and the agitated breathing of the three
unhappy others, Jimmy got his wish. By quick but perfectly
plain-to-be-seen degrees Jimmy became rich. And the horrible
thing was that though they could see it happening they did not
know what was happening, and could not have stopped it if they
had. All they could see was Jimmy, their own Jimmy, whom they
had larked with and quarrelled with and made it up with ever since
they could remember, Jimmy continuously and horribly growing
old. The whole thing was over in a few seconds. Yet in those few
seconds they saw him grow to a youth, a young man, a
middle-aged man; and then, with a sort of shivering shock,
unspeakably horrible and definite, he seemed to settle down into
an elderly gentleman, handsomely but rather dowdily dressed, who
was looking down at them through spectacles and asking them the
nearest way to the railway-station.
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