ame candid, unsophisticated cloister face. His
education had been really almost monastic. It had found him evidently a
very compliant, yielding subject; his gentle affectionate spirit was not
one of those that need to be broken. It had bequeathed him, now that he
stood on the threshold of the great world, an extraordinary freshness of
impression and alertness of desire, and I confess that, as I looked at
him and met his transparent blue eye, I trembled for the unwarned
innocence of such a soul. I became aware, gradually, that the world had
already wrought a certain work upon him and roused him to a restless,
troubled self-consciousness. Everything about him pointed to an
experience from which he had been debarred; his whole organism trembled
with a dawning sense of unsuspected possibilities of feeling. This
appealing tremor was indeed outwardly visible. He kept shifting himself
about on the grass, thrusting his hands through his hair, wiping a light
perspiration from his forehead, breaking out to say something and rushing
off to something else. Our sudden meeting had greatly excited him, and I
saw that I was likely to profit by a certain overflow of sentimental
fermentation. I could do so with a good conscience, for all this
trepidation filled me with a great friendliness.

"It's nearly fifteen years, as you say," he began, "since you used to
call me 'butter-fingers' for always missing the ball. That's a long time
to give an account of, and yet they have been, for me, such eventless,
monotonous years, that I could almost tell their history in ten words.
You, I suppose, have had all kinds of adventures and travelled over half
the world. I remember you had a turn for deeds of daring; I used to
think you a little Captain Cook in roundabouts, for climbing the garden
fence to get the ball when I had let it fly over. I climbed no fences
then or since. You remember my father, I suppose, and the great care he
took of me? I lost him some five months ago. From those boyish days up
to his death we were always together. I don't think that in fifteen
years we spent half a dozen hours apart. We lived in the country, winter
and summer, seeing but three or four people. I had a succession of
tutors, and a library to browse about in; I assure you I am a tremendous
scholar. It was a dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for a
young man grown, but I never knew it. I was perfectly happy." He spoke
of his father