different from our own. Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt
because the lad was slow to perceive all that he had so soon become,
and all that I meant him to become, to me. I knew from every tone of
his voice, every chance expression of his honest eyes, that he was
one of those characters in which we may be sure that for each feeling
they express lies a countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below;
a character the keystone of which was that whereon is built all
liking and all love--DEPENDABLENESS. He was one whom you may be long
in knowing, but whom the more you know the more you trust; and once
trusting, you trust for ever.

Perhaps I may be supposed imaginative, or, at least, premature in
discovering all these characteristics in a boy of fourteen; and
possibly in thus writing of him I may unwittingly be drawing a little
from after-experience; however, being the truth, let it stand.

"Come," said I, changing the conversation, "we have had enough of me;
how goes the world with you? Have you taken kindly to the tan-yard?
Answer frankly."

He looked at me hard, put both his hands in his pockets, and began to
whistle a tune.

"Don't shirk the question, please, John. I want to know the real
truth."

"Well, then, I hate the tan-yard."

Having relieved his mind by this ebullition, and by kicking a small
heap of tan right down into the river, he became composed.