“Is that you, Nicholas Burr?” he asked in a slightly supercilious voice.  “The judge has told me about you.  So you won’t be a farmer, eh?  And you won’t stay in your class?  Well, come in and we’ll see what we can make of you.”

Nicholas followed him into the room and sat down at one of the pine desks, while the judge’s son, Tom, nodded to him from across the room, and Bernard Battle grinned over his shoulder at his sister Eugenia, and a handsome boy, called Dudley Webb, made a face which convulsed little Sally Burwell, who hid her merriment in her curls.  There were several other children in the room, but Nicholas did not see them distinctly.  Something had got before his eyes and there was a lump in his throat.  He sat rigidly in his seat, his straw hat, with the shoestring around the crown, lying upon the desk before him.  He looked neither to the right nor to the left, keeping his frightened gaze upon the tutor’s face.

Mr. Graves asked him a few questions, which he could not answer, and then, giving him a book, turned to the other children.  As the lessons went on it seemed to Nicholas that he had never known anything in his life; that he should never know anything; and that he should always remain the most ignorant person on earth—­unless that lot fell to Sairy Jane.

The difficulties besetting the path of knowledge appeared to be insurmountable.  Even if he had the books and the time he could never learn anything—­his head would prevent it.

“Bound Beloochistan, Tom,” said the tutor, and Tom, a stout, fair-haired boy with a heavy face, went through the process to the satisfaction of Mr. Graves and to the amazement of Nicholas.

The office was a plain, square room, containing, besides the desks and tables, an old secretary and a corner cupboard of an antique pattern, which held an odd assortment of cracked china and chemist bottles.  There was also a square mahogany chest, called the wine-cellar, which had been sent from the dining-room when the last bottle of Tokay was opened to drink the health of the Confederacy.

Before the war the place had been used by the judge as a general business room, but when the slaves were freed and there were fewer servants it was found to be little needed, and was finally given over entirely to the children’s school.

When recess came the tutor left the office, telling Nicholas that he might go home with the little girls if he liked.  “I shall try to have the books you need by to-morrow,” he said, and, his natural amiability overcoming his assumed superciliousness, he added pleasantly: 

“I shouldn’t mind being backward at first.  The boys are older than you, but you’ll soon catch up.”

He went out, and Nicholas had started towards the door, when Tom Bassett flung himself before him, swinging skilfully over an intervening table.

“Hold up, carrot-head,” he said.  “Let’s have a look at you.  Are all heads afire where you come from?”