.
Older than he!

And not only that; nearly fifteen! Why, at fifteen--at fifteen girls
get married! The odds were heavy. He wished he had thought of that at
first. He was sadly confused. Sometimes when Bonaventure spoke words
of enthusiasm and regard to him after urging him fiercely up some hill
of difficulty among the bristling heights of English pronunciation, he
yearned to seek him alone and tell him this difficulty of the heart.
There was no fear that Bonaventure would laugh; he seemed scarce to
know how; and his smiles were all of tenderness and zeal. Claude did
not believe the ten years between them would matter; had not
Bonaventure said to him but yesterday that to him all loveliness was
the lovelier for being very young? Yet when the confession seemed
almost on Claude's lips it was driven back by an alien mood in the
master's face. There were troubles in Bonaventure's heart that Claude
wot not of.

One day who should drop in just as school was about to begin but the
priest from College Point! Such order as he found! Bonaventure stood
at his desk like a general on a high hill, his large hand-bell in his
grasp, passed his eyes over the seventeen demure girls, with their
large, brown-black, liquid eyes, their delicately pencilled brows,
their dark, waveless hair, and sounded one tap! The sport outside
ceased, the gaps at the shed's farther end were darkened by small
forms that came darting like rabbits into their burrows, eighteen
small hats came off, and the eighteen boys came softly forward and
took their seats. Such discipline!

"Sir," said Bonaventure, "think you 'tis arising, f'om the strickness
of the teacher? 'Tis f'om the goodness of the chil'run! How I long the
State Sup'inten'ent Public Education to see them!"

The priest commended the sight and the wish with smiling affirmations
that somehow seemed to lack sympathy. He asked the names of two or
three pupils. That little fellow with soft, tanned, chubby cheeks and
great black eyes, tiny mouth, smooth feet so shapely and small, still
wet to their ankles with dew, and arms that he could but just get
folded, was Toutou. That lad with the strong shoulders, good wide
brows, steady eye, and general air of manliness,--that was Claude St.
Pierre. And this girl over on the left here,--"You observe," said
Bonaventure, "I situate the lambs on the left and the kids on the
right,"--this little, slender crescent of human moonlight, with her
hair in two heavy, bla