As for Tom, he had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth.  It would have taken a long while to make it conceivable to him that there ever existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen, and transacted the everyday affairs of life through the medium of this language, or why he should be called upon to learn it, when its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent.  He was of a very firm, not to say obstinate disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion or recklessness in his nature; the human sensibilities predominated, and he was anxious to acquire Mr. Stelling’s approbation by showing some quickness at his lessons, if he had known how to accomplish it.

In his secret heart Tom yearned to have Maggie with him, and, before the first dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came.  Mrs. Stelling had given a general invitation for the little girl to come and stay with her brother; so when Mr. Tulliver drove over to King’s Lorton late in October, Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and beginning to see the world.

“Well, my lad,” Mr. Tulliver said, “you look rarely!  School agrees with you!”

“I don’t think I am well, father,” said Tom; “I wish you’d ask Mr. Stelling not to let me do Euclid—­it brings on the toothache, I think.”

“Euclid, my lad—­why, what’s that?” said Mr. Tulliver.

“Oh, I don’t know!  It’s definitions and axioms and triangles and things.  It’s a book I’ve got to learn in—­there’s no sense in it.”

“Go, go!” said Mr. Tulliver reprovingly.  “You mustn’t say so.  You must learn what your master tells you.  He knows what it’s right for you to learn.”

In the second term Mr. Stelling had a second pupil—­Philip, the son of Lawyer Wakem, Mr. Tulliver’s standing enemy.

Philip was a very old-looking boy, Tom thought.  His spine had been deformed through an accident in infancy, and to Tom he was simply a humpback.  He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem’s son had some relation to the lawyer’s rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot emphasis.

There was a natural antipathy of temperament between the two boys; for Tom was an excellent bovine lad, and Philip was sensitive, and suffered acute pain when the other blurted out offensive things.

Maggie, on her second visit to King’s Lorton, pronounced Philip to be “a nice boy.”

“He couldn’t choose his father, you know,” she said to Tom.  “And I’ve read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad children.”

“Oh, he’s a queer fellow,” said Tom curtly, “and he’s as sulky as can be with me because I told him his father was a rogue.  And I’d a right to tell him so, for it was true—­and he began it with calling me names.”

An accident to Tom’s foot brought the two boys nearer again, and also threw Philip and Maggie together.