It was the first of many tiresome evening visits.  But the next day he was always himself again, and the class wilted under his merciless, contemptuous sarcasms.  Only Robert was not afraid.  He knew that the lash would never come his way, and he could feel the little man’s unspoken pride, when he showed himself quicker than his companions, like a secret Masonic pressure of the hand.  And there was something else.  It was a discovery that made him at first almost dizzy with astonishment.  He wasn’t stupid.  Just as he was stronger, so he was cleverer than boys older than himself.  He could do things at once over which they botched and bungled.  He outstripped them when he chose.  Even his ignorance did not handicap him for long.  For Mr. Ricardo had kept his promise.  He taught well, and in those long afternoons in the hot boarding-house attic Robert had raced over the lost ground.  He did not always want to work.  He gazed out of the window, half his mind busy planning what he and Rufus Cosgrave would do when they met at the corner of the street, but he could not help understanding what was so obvious, and there were moments when sheer interest swept him off his feet, and even Rufus was forgotten.  He took an audacious pleasure, too, in leaping suddenly over the heads of the whole class to the first place.  He did not always bother.  He liked to wait for some really teasing question, and then, when silence had become hopeless, hold up his hand.  Mr. Ricardo would look towards him, apparently incredulous and satirical, but Robert could read the message which the narrowed eyes twinkled at him.

“Of course you understand, Stonehouse.”

And then he would answer and sweep the sullen class with a cool, exasperating indifference as he sat down.  For he did not want them any more.  He returned instinctive enmity with the scorn of a growing confidence.  It was rather fine to stand by yourself, especially when you had one friend who thought you splendid whatever you did, who clung to you, and whom you had to protect.  When he walked arm in arm with Rufus Cosgrave in the playground he trailed his coat insolently, and the challenge was not once accepted.  From the biggest boys to Dickson Minor, no one cared to risk the limitless possibilities of an encounter, and the word “carrots” was not so much as whispered in his hearing.

Then in the late afternoon the real day seemed to begin.  Then the hardness and distrust with which he had unconsciously armed himself fell away, and he and Rufus Cosgrave sat side by side in the sooty grass behind the biscuit factory, and with arms clasped about their scarred and grubby knees planned out the vague but glorious time that waited for them.  Rufus was to be a Civil Servant.  He did not seem to care much for the prospect or even to be very clear as to what would be expected of him.  He felt, with Robert, that a Civil Servant sounded servile and romanceless, but unfortunately the profession, whatever it was, ran in the family.