My father did not look up, but he nodded his head and said, “Yes; you may go.”

As I went he called me back.

“Are you going to the farm this afternoon?”

To my own infinite annoyance I blushed as I answered, “I was going to sit with Charlie a bit, unless you have any objection.”

“Not at all.  I only asked for information.  I have no wish to interfere with any respectable friends you may be disposed to give your confidence to.  But I should like it to be understood that either your mother or I must have some knowledge of your movements.”

“Mother knew quite well I was going!” I exclaimed “Why, I’ve got a parcel to take to Mrs. Wood from her.”

“Very good.  There’s no occasion to display temper.  Shut the door after you.”

I shut it very gently. (If three years at Crayshaw’s had taught me nothing else, it had taught me much self-control.) Then I got away to the first hiding-place I could find, and buried my head upon my arms.  Would not a beating from Snuffy have been less hard to bear?  Surely sore bones from those one despises are not so painful as a sore heart from those one loves.

Our household affections were too sound at the core for the mere fact of displeasing my father not to weigh heavily on my soul.  But I could not help defending myself in my own mind against what I knew to be injustice.

Jem “frank with his father”?  Well he might be, when our father’s partiality met him half-way at every turn. That was no fancy of mine.  I had the clearest of childish remembrances of an occasion when I wanted to do something which our farming-man thought my father would not approve, and how when I urged the fact that Jem had already done it with impunity, he shook his head wiseacrely, and said, “Aye, aye, Master Jack.  But ye know they say some folks may steal a horse, when other folks mayn’t look over the hedge.”

The vagueness of “some folks” and “other folks” had left the proverb dark to my understanding when I heard it, but I remembered it till I understood it.

I never was really jealous of Jem.  He was far too good-natured and unspoilt, and I was too fond of him.  Besides which, if the mental tone of our country lives was at rather a dull level, it was also wholesomely unfavourable to the cultivation of morbid grievances, or the dissection of one’s own hurt feelings.  If I had told anybody about me, from my dear mother down to our farming-man, that I was misunderstood and wanted sympathy, I should probably have been answered that many a lad of my age was homeless and wanted boots.  As a matter of reasoning the reply would have been defective, but for practical purposes it would have been much to the point.  And it is fair to this rough-and-ready sort of philosophy to defend it from a common charge of selfishness.  It was not that I should have been the happier because another lad was miserable, but that an awakened sympathy with his harder fate would tend to dwarf egotistic absorption in my own.  Such considerations, in short, are no justification of those who are responsible for needless evil or neglected good, but they are handy helps to those who suffer from them, and who feel sadly sorry for themselves.