knowledge that it was to be so, and it occurred to him for the first
time--for children, like animals, accept what comes to them very
naturally--that it was odd one could be so completely disposed of by
grown-up people, even for one's undoubted good....

Of the interview with the headmaster, so square of jowl and brow and yet
so kindly, Ishmael remembered little in after years; for it became
blurred by all he grew to know of "Old Tring" during the long though
intermittent association of school. Old Tring rang a bell, after a gruff
sentence of welcome, and, apparently as glad as Ishmael for an excuse to
part, told him he should be shown round by one Killigrew. Old Tring
added that he, Ishmael Ruan, would be sure to like Killigrew. Ishmael
doubted this; somehow, waiting there in that still room, whose
tranquillity seemed so much of its essence as to be more than a mere
absence of noise, waiting and gazing at the strip of sunlit High Street
that seemed lambent by contrast with the dimness within, Ishmael
conceived a dislike to Killigrew. The name sounded brisk, brutal even;
Ishmael was unaware that it was the fact that he had been told he would
like Killigrew which awaked his antagonism. Unconsciously he resented
that this old man should take advantage of knowing more of books to
think that therefore he knew what he, Ishmael, would and would not like.

They all three waited; the Parson ran a finger along the lines of
calf-bound books, then paused, Old Tring at his elbow. Ishmael was
forgotten, isolated in himself, and, without warning, in the irrational
way of such phases, he was overwhelmed by one of those strange periods
in which, though actually but a second or so, time seems to hold its
breath and the consciousness, muffled by some overwhelming dimness, is
arrested and stands alone, on a pin-point of eternity, without past or
future. It seemed to him that nothing would ever move again in the dim