He knew things about troy weight and geography and Isaac and the Mariners of England of which Billy did not dream.

To Billy the football news in the Saturday afternoon edition of The Bludston Herald was a cryptogram; to him it was an open book.

He would stand, acknowledged scholar, at the street corner and read out from the soiled copy retrieved by Chunky, the newsboy, the enthralling story of the football day, never stumbling over a syllable, athrill with the joy of being the umbilicus of a tense world, and, when the recital was over, he would have the mortification of seeing the throng pass away from him with the remorselessness of a cloud scudding from the moon.
And he would hear Billy Goodge say exultantly: "Didn't Aw tell yo' the Wolves hadn't a dog's chance ?" And he would see the admiring gang slap Billy on the back, and hear "Good owd Billy!" and never a word of thanks to him.

Then, knowing Billy to be a liar, he would tell him so, yelping shrilly, in Buttonesque vernacular (North and South): "This morning tha said it was five to one on Sheffield United." "Listen to Susie!" The parasitic urchins would yell at the witticism--the eternal petitio principii of childhood, which Billy, secure in his cohort from bloody nose, felt justified in making.

And Paul Kegworthy, the rag of a newspaper crumpled tight in his little hand, would watch them disappear and wonder at the paradox of life.