t was, he began, in his secretive way, to copy Boase at all
points that seemed good to him, doing things of his own initiative which
he would have rebelled from being told. When the Parson got him a pony
at fair-time, Ishmael soon gathered that a gentleman rode without
kicking his horse in the belly or jagging at its mouth, as was the
custom in that part of the world. He learnt, too, by the simple
reappearance of a tin bath, flanked by an earthen pitcher of water, in
his room morning after morning, that a gentleman washed all over every
day. At first this bored him considerably, but after one day when the
Parson took him down to the cove to bathe, and he had occasion to be
ashamed of his grubby little legs and feet beside the other's shining
whiteness, that too altered. Yet the Parson had said nothing, hardly
given more than a look. In the same way, when he gathered that the
Parson trusted him to tell the truth, and that no grievous consequences
attended it, he gradually ceased to lie, though this took time, since
lying with him, as with many children, had become an instinct. Gradually
the whole atmosphere of the Vicarage, with its shiny mahogany furniture,
its faded rep curtains, its old prints and few unassuming miniatures of
the quiet country gentlefolk who were Boase's ancestors, its queer
mingled smell of old books and lavender, all became part of Ishmael's
consciousness.

He had a great deal of freedom, once the morning's lessons were over,
for the Parson was a busy man and his parish many miles wide. At first
Boase had been rather worried about these spaces in Ishmael's time, for
there were no gentlefolk's children for him to play with nearer than
seven or eight miles, and it was a necessary part of the great plan to
keep from undue familiarity with the village boys. There was always
Phoebe, but Ishmael was growing of an age to despise girls. Besides,
nice soft little thing that Phoebe was, she talked with a dialect as
thick as treacle. Eventually, however, it turned out that girls were to
be Ishmael's chief companions, and the Parson concluded it would do him
no harm to be under what is commonly supposed to be a softening
influence before plunging into the stern masculinities of St. Renny. It
was John-James who brought about the feminine factor in Ishmael's days,
some six months after the Vicarage period had begun.

It was early spring, the first rathe-primroses were showing their
milk-fair faces on the cliff,