ed to give your confidence
to. But I should like it to be understood that either your mother or I
must have some knowledge of your movements."

"Mother knew quite well I was going!" I exclaimed "Why, I've got a
parcel to take to Mrs. Wood from her."

"Very good. There's no occasion to display temper. Shut the door after
you."

I shut it very gently. (If three years at Crayshaw's had taught me
nothing else, it had taught me much self-control.) Then I got away to
the first hiding-place I could find, and buried my head upon my arms.
Would not a beating from Snuffy have been less hard to bear? Surely sore
bones from those one despises are not so painful as a sore heart from
those one loves.

Our household affections were too sound at the core for the mere fact of
displeasing my father not to weigh heavily on my soul. But I could not
help defending myself in my own mind against what I knew to be
injustice.

Jem "frank with his father"? Well he might be, when our father's
partiality met him half-way at every turn. _That_ was no fancy of mine.
I had the clearest of childish remembrances of an occasion when I wanted
to do something which our farming-man thought my father would not
approve, and how when I urged the fact that Jem had already done it with
impunity, he shook his head wiseacrely, and said, "Aye, aye, Master
Jack. But ye know they say some folks may steal a horse, when other
folks mayn't look over the hedge."

The vagueness of "some folks" and "other folks" had left the proverb
dark to my understanding when I heard it, but I remembered it till I
understood it.

I never was really jealous of Jem. He was far too good-natured and
unspoilt, and I was too fond of him. Besides which, if the mental tone
of our country lives was at rather a dull level, it was also wholesomely
unfavourable to the cultivation of morbid grievances, or the dissection
of one's own hurt feelings. If I had told anybody about me, from my dear
mother down to our farming-man, that I was misunderstood and wanted
sympathy, I should probably have been answered that many a lad of my age
was homeless and wanted boots. As a matter of reasoning the reply would
have been defective, but for practical purposes it would have been much
to the point. And it is fair to this rough-and-ready sort of philosophy
to defend it from a common charge of selfishness. It was not that I
should have been the happier because another lad was miserable, but that
an awake