‘We can’t wait here all day for Dick,’ Tom said.  ’Let us go out and look at the pictures.’

So they went down the stairs to a long hall, in which many pictures were hanging—­some family portraits and others, copies of the old masters which Mr. St. Claire had brought from abroad.  Near one of the portraits Fred lingered a long time, commenting upon its beauty, and the resemblance he saw in it to little Nina St. Claire, the daughter of the house, and whose aunt the original had been.  The portrait was not far from the stairway which led to the billiard-room, and Harold, who had remained behind, and was listlessly knocking the balls, could not help hearing all they said: 

’By the way, who is that Hastings?  I don’t think I have seen him before; he is a right clever chap,’ Fred Raymond said.

Tom replied, in that sneering, contemptuous tone which Harold knew so well, and which always made his blood boil and his fingers tingle with a desire to knock the speaker down: 

’Oh, that’s Hal Hastings, a poor boy, who does chores for us and the St. Claires.  His grandmother used to work at the park house, and so uncle Arthur pays for his schooling, and Hal allows it, which I think right small in him.  I wouldn’t be a charity student, anyway, if I never knew anything.  Besides that, what’s the use of education to chaps like him.  Better stay as he was born.  I don’t believe in educating the masses, do you?’

Of himself Tom could never have thought of all this, but he had heard it from his mother, who frequently used the expression ’not to elevate the masses,’ forgetting that she was once herself a part of the mass which she would now keep down.

Just what Fred said in reply Harold did not hear.  There was a ringing in his ears, and he felt as if every drop of blood in his body was rushing to his head as he sat down, dizzy and bewildered, and smarting cruelly under the wound he had received this time.  He had more than once been taunted with his poverty and dependence upon Mr. Tracy, but the taunts had never hurt him so before, and he could have cried out in his pain as he thought of Tom’s words, and knew that in himself there was the making of a far nobler manhood than Tom Tracy would ever know.

Was poverty, which one could not help, so terrible a disgrace, an insuperable barrier to elevation, and was it mean and small in him to accept his education from a man on whom he had no claim?  Possibly; and if so, the state of things should not continue.  He would go to Arthur Tracy, thank him for all he had done, and tell him he could receive no more from him; that if he had an education, he must get it himself by the work of his own hands, and thus be beholden to no one.

Full of this resolution, he went down the stairs and out into the open air, which cooled his hot head a little, though it was still throbbing terribly as he went through the leafy woods toward home.