He was very anxious to know Isaac Irvine, and when I brought the bee-master to see him, they seemed to hold friendly converse with their looks even before either of them spoke.  It was a bad day with Charlie, but he set his lips against the pain, and raised himself on one arm to stare out of his big brown eyes at the old man, who met them with as steady a gaze out of his.  Then Charlie lowered himself again, and said in a tone of voice by which I knew he was pleased, “I’m so glad you’ve come to see me, old Isaac.  It’s very kind of you.  Jack says you know a lot about live things, and that you like the numbers we like in the Penny Cyclopaedia.  I wanted to see you, for I think you and I are much in the same boat; you’re old, and I’m crippled, and we’re both too poor to travel.  But Jack’s to go, and when he’s gone, you and I’ll follow him on the map.”

“GOD willing, sir,” said the bee-master; and when he said that, I knew how sorry he felt for poor Charlie, for when he was moved he always said very short things, and generally something religious.

And for all Charlie’s whims and fancies, and in all his pain and fretfulness, and through fits of silence and sensitiveness, he had never a better friend than Isaac Irvine.  Indeed the bee-master was one of those men (to be found in all ranks) whose delicate tenderness might not be guessed from the size and roughness of the outer man.

Our neighbours were all very kind to Mr. Wood, in their own way, but they were a little impatient of his slowness to be sociable, and had, I think, a sort of feeling that the ex-convict ought not only to enjoy evening parties more than other people, but to be just a little more grateful for being invited.

However, one must have a strong and sensitive imagination to cultivate wide sympathies when one lives a quiet, methodical life in the place where one’s father and grandfather lived out quiet methodical lives before one; and I do not think we were an imaginative race.

The school-master (as we used to call him) had seen and suffered so much more of life than we, that I do not think he resented the clumsiness of our sympathy; but now I look back I fancy that he must have felt as if he wanted years of peace and quiet in which to try and forget the years of suffering.  Old Isaac said one day, “I reckon the master feels as if he wanted to sit down and say to hisself over and over again, ’I’m a free man, I’m a free man, I’m a free man,’ till he can fair trust himself to believe it.”

Isaac was probably right, and perhaps evening parties, though they are meant for treats, are not the best places to sit down and feel free in, particularly when there are a lot of strange people who have heard a dreadful story about you, and want to see what you look like after it.

During the summer holidays Jem and I were out the whole day long.  When we came in I was ready for the Penny Numbers, but Jem always fell asleep, even if he did not go to bed at once.  My father did just the same.  I think their feeling about houses was of a perfectly primitive kind.  They looked upon them as comfortable shelter for sleeping and eating, but not at all as places in which to pursue any occupation.  Life, for them, was lived out-of-doors.