At tea that afternoon, I was very much downcast, and under cross-examination from Miss Marks, all my little story came out.  My Father, who had been floating away in a meditation, as he very often did, caught a word that interested him and descended to consciousness.  I had to tell my tale over again, this time very sadly, and with a fear that I should be reprimanded.  But on the contrary, both my Father and Miss Marks were attentive and most sympathetic, and I was much comforted.  ’We must remember they are the Lord’s children,’ said my Father.  ’Even the Lord can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ said Miss Marks, who was considerably ruffled.  ‘Alas! alas!’ replied my Father, waving his hand with a deprecating gesture.  ‘The dear child!’ said Miss Marks, bristling with indignation, and patting my hand across the tea-table.  ’The Lord will reward your zealous loving care of his poor, even if they have neither the grace nor the knowledge to thank you,’ said my Father, and rested his brown eyes meltingly upon me.  ‘Brutes!’ said Miss Marks, thinking of John and Ann Brooks.  ‘Oh no! no!’ replied my Father, ’but hewers of wood and drawers of water!  We must bear with the limited intelligence.’  All this was an emollient to my wounds, and I became consoled.  But the springs of benevolence were dried up within me, and to this day I have never entirely recovered from the shock of John Brooks’s coarse leer and his ‘I know’d the Lord would provide.’  The infant plant of philanthropy was burned in my bosom as if by quick-lime.

In the course of the summer, a young schoolmaster called on my Father to announce to him that he had just opened a day-school for the sons of gentlemen in our vicinity, and he begged for the favour of a visit.  My Father returned his call; he lived in one of the small white villas, buried in laurels, which gave a discreet animation to our neighbourhood.  Mr. M. was frank and modest, deferential to my Father’s opinions and yet capable of defending his own.  His school and he produced an excellent impression, and in August I began to be one of his pupils.  The school was very informal; it was held in the two principal dwelling-rooms on the ground-floor of the villa, and I do not remember that Mr. M. had any help from an usher.

There were perhaps twenty boys in the school at most, and often fewer.  I made the excursion between home and school four times a day; if I walked fast, the transit might take five minutes, and, as there were several objects of interest in the way, it might be spread over an hour.  In fine weather the going to and from school was very delightful, and small as the scope of it was, it could be varied almost indefinitely.  I would sometimes meet with a schoolfellow proceeding in the same direction, and my Father, observing us over the wall one morning, was amused to notice that I always progressed by dancing along the curbstone sideways, my face turned inwards and my arms beating against my legs, conversing loudly all the time.  This was a case of pure heredity, for so he used to go to his school, forty years before, along the streets of Poole.