ittle finger, old boy--there's no mistake
about that." And East nodded at Tom sagaciously.

"Now or never!" thought Tom; so shutting his eyes and hardening his
heart, he went straight at it, repeating all that Arthur had said, as
near as he could remember it, in the very words, and all he had himself
thought. The life seemed to ooze out of it as he went on, and several
times he felt inclined to stop, give it all up, and change the subject.
But somehow he was borne on; he had a necessity upon him to speak it all
out, and did so. At the end he looked at East with some anxiety, and was
delighted to see that that young gentleman was thoughtful and attentive.
The fact is, that in the stage of his inner life at which Tom had lately
arrived, his intimacy with and friendship for East could not have lasted
if he had not made him aware of, and a sharer in, the thoughts that were
beginning to exercise him. Nor indeed could the friendship have lasted
if East had shown no sympathy with these thoughts; so that it was a
great relief to have unbosomed himself, and to have found that his
friend could listen.

Tom had always had a sort of instinct that East's levity was only
skin-deep; and this instinct was a true one. East had no want of
reverence for anything he felt to be real: but his was one of those
natures that burst into what is generally called recklessness and
impiety the moment they feel that anything is being poured upon them for
their good, which does not come home to their inborn sense of right, or
which appeals to anything like self-interest in them. Daring and honest
by nature, and outspoken to an extent which alarmed all
respectabilities, with a constant fund of animal health and spirits
which he did not feel bound to curb in any way, he had gained for
himself with the steady part of the School (including as well those who
wished to appear steady as those who really were so), the character of a
boy whom it would be dangerous to be intimate with; while his own hatred
of everything cruel, or underhand, or false, and his hearty respect for
what he could see to be good and true, kept off the rest.

Tom, besides being very like East in many points of character, had
largely developed in his composition the capacity for taking the weakest
side. This is not putting it strongly enough; it was a necessity with
him; he couldn't help it any more than he could eating or drinking. He
could never play on the strongest side with any h