eemed to look
down on him from a height, regarding him with a dignified and quiet
interest; his personal affection for them had led him indeed to be
careful not to ill-use them; he had always disliked the gathering of
flowers, the tearing off of boughs or leaves from shrubs. They seemed
to suffer injury patiently, but none the less did he think that they
were hurt. He liked to touch the full-blown heads of the roses, when
they yielded their petals at a touch into his hand, because it seemed
that they gave themselves willingly. And then too, when the big china
bowl that stood in the hall was full of them, and they were mixed with
spices, the embalming process seemed to give them a longer and a fuller
life.

But now he was leaving all this; day after day the garden would bloom,
until the autumn came, and the trees showered down their golden leaves
on walk and lawn. He had seen it year after year, and now he would see
it no more. Would they miss him as he would miss them? And so the
last afternoon was to him a wistful valediction; he went softly about,
to and fro, with a strange sadness at his heart, the first shadow of
the leave-takings of the world.

The school to which he went was a big place in the suburbs of London,
standing near a royal park. The place was full of dignified houses,
standing among trees and paddocks, with high blank garden-walls
everywhere. The school itself had been once a great suburban mansion,
the villa of a statesman. The rooms were large, high, and dignified,
but the bareness of life, under the new conditions, was a great trial
to the boy. He had a certain luxuriousness of temperament, not in
matters of meat and drink, but in the surroundings and apparatus of
life. The bare, uncurtained, uncarpeted rooms, the big dormitory with
its cubicles, the stone-flagged passages, all appeared to him mean and
sordid. His schoolmaster was a man of real force of character, a tall
stately personage, with a great enthusiasm for literature, a fine
converser and teacher, and with a deep insight into character. But
this was marred by a want of tenderness, a certain harshness of
disposition, and a belief that boys needed to be repressed and
dragooned. Hugh conceived an overwhelming terror for this majestic
man, with the dress and bearing of a fine gentleman, with his flashing
eyes, his thin lips, his grey curly hair, his straggling beard. He was
a friend of Hugh's father, and took a certain interes