Chapter Five

    It was not until he was fifteen, at the cadet camp in Vernon, that Toby first really heard of Hastings, from the some of the noblest of its ambassadors. In those big huts, left over from the military establishment erected in World War, for training infantry, it was a healthy throw of a football from one end to the other, and Toby had found no shortage of friends at his own end, plenty of constant and good humoured daily company in class or parade ground or recreation. Thus for over a month. But somehow in the last week or ten days left to the summer in khaki, he had run into a tightly knit trio who occupied the beds at the far end. They regularly hung out together and they all came from the same unit in the same town. At his end, his regulars were from different towns, different regiments. A piper from the Calgary Highlanders, a giant of a boy from the electrical and mechanical regiment in New Westminster, a third from northern Alberta.
  
   The three lads had asked him if he knew how to play Canasta, a card game that was all the rage in those days. When Toby said no, they said he would teach him, because they needed a fourth.
They were not all cliquish, but being very secure with each other, and happy with where they came from, they made him comfortable at once. He was not especially curious about Hastings, but he of course asked them something about it, still recalling how put out at himself he was when the Vancouver newspaper his parents subscribed to had run a contest on the provincial place names and he had been utterly ignorant of those in the south-east corner of the province. At school, he was very good at geography, and had traveled from one end of the country to the other, so he'd had to conclude that somehow his education had been neglected by those responsible to keep him informed. Also, the household had been short of maps. The Skinners had been in the rebuilding phase. After the war, after his father going under in the logging business.
  
   What was eminently notable about all three of the boys, without exception, was their manner. They were quite the young gentlemen: self-composed, urbane, relaxed, not coarse, but without being priggish. They chatted about anything as they played the game, and whoever lost was never upset over the downfall. They made a very pleasant end to the last days of the camp. And they taught him a card game. The piper, for all Toby's curiosity, had been unable to teach him any music, although he knew he was anxious to learn. He did not learn a lot about Hastings, but he gathered that it seemed to be a good place to grow up, a town with a life of its own, although they never mentioned the university, nor did they discuss any of the girls they knew.