The next day his thoughts, having nothing particular to engage them,
kept brooding over two things. These two things came together all at
once, and a resolution was the consequence. I shall soon explain what I
mean.

The one thing was, that Hector had shown considerable surprise when
he found that Willie could not read. Now Willie was not in the least
ashamed that he could not read: why should he be? It was nowhere written
in the catechism he had learnt that it was his duty to be able to read;
and if the catechism had merely forgotten to mention it, his father and
mother would have told him. Neither was it a duty he ought to have
known of himself--for then he would have known it. So why should he be
ashamed?

People are often ashamed of what they need not be ashamed of. Again,
they are often not at all ashamed of what they ought to be ashamed of,
and will turn up their faces to the sun when they ought to hide them in
the dust. If, for instance, Willie had ever put on a sulky face when his
mother asked him to hold the baby for her, that would have been a thing
for shame of which the skin of his face might well try to burn itself
off; but not to be able to read before he had even been made to think
about it, was not at all a thing to be ashamed of: it would have been
more of a shame to be ashamed. Now that it had been put into his head,
however, to think what a good thing reading was, all this would apply no
longer. It was a very different thing now.

The other subject which occupied his thoughts was this:

Everybody was so kind to him--so ready to do things for him--and, what
was of far more consequence, to teach him to do them himself; while he,