As for Pemberton’s own estimate of his pupil, it was a good while before he got the point of view, so little had he been prepared for it by the smug young barbarians to whom the tradition of tutorship, as hitherto revealed to him, had been adjusted.  Morgan was scrappy and surprising, deficient in many properties supposed common to the genus and abounding in others that were the portion only of the supernaturally clever.  One day his friend made a great stride:  it cleared up the question to perceive that Morgan was supernaturally clever and that, though the formula was temporarily meagre, this would be the only assumption on which one could successfully deal with him.  He had the general quality of a child for whom life had not been simplified by school, a kind of homebred sensibility which might have been as bad for himself but was charming for others, and a whole range of refinement and perception—­little musical vibrations as taking as picked-up airs—­begotten by wandering about Europe at the tail of his migratory tribe.  This might not have been an education to recommend in advance, but its results with so special a subject were as appreciable as the marks on a piece of fine porcelain.  There was at the same time in him a small strain of stoicism, doubtless the fruit of having had to begin early to bear pain, which counted for pluck and made it of less consequence that he might have been thought at school rather a polyglot little beast.  Pemberton indeed quickly found himself rejoicing that school was out of the question:  in any million of boys it was probably good for all but one, and Morgan was that millionth.  It would have made him comparative and superior—­it might have made him really require kicking.  Pemberton would try to be school himself—­a bigger seminary than five hundred grazing donkeys, so that, winning no prizes, the boy would remain unconscious and irresponsible and amusing—­amusing, because, though life was already intense in his childish nature, freshness still made there a strong draught for jokes.  It turned out that even in the still air of Morgan’s various disabilities jokes flourished greatly.  He was a pale lean acute undeveloped little cosmopolite, who liked intellectual gymnastics and who also, as regards the behaviour of mankind, had noticed more things than you might suppose, but who nevertheless had his proper playroom of superstitions, where he smashed a dozen toys a day.

CHAPTER III

At Nice once, toward evening, as the pair rested in the open air after a walk, and looked over the sea at the pink western lights, he said suddenly to his comrade:  “Do you like it, you know—­being with us all in this intimate way?”

“My dear fellow, why should I stay if I didn’t?”

“How do I know you’ll stay?  I’m almost sure you won’t, very long.”

“I hope you don’t mean to dismiss me,” said Pemberton.