"I didn't want anything."

"But you started running here as fast as you could the moment you caught
sight of me."

"Yes, I did."

"Well, what did you do it for--what was your object in running here?"

"Just to see you pass," he answered.

It was a little ridiculous and vexed me at first, but by and by when I
left him, after some more conversation, I felt rather pleased; for it
was a new and somewhat flattering experience to have any person run a
long distance over a ploughed field, burdened with a heavy gun, "just to
see me pass."

But it was not strange in the circumstances; his hours in that grey,
windy desolation must have seemed like days, and it was a break in the
monotony, a little joyful excitement in getting to the road in time to
see a passer-by more closely, and for a few moments gave him a sense of
human companionship. I began even to feel a little sorry for him, alone
there in his high, dreary world, but presently thought he was better off
and better employed than most of his fellows poring over miserable books
in school, and I wished we had a more rational system of education for
the agricultural districts, one which would not keep the children shut
up in a room during all the best hours of the day, when to be out of
doors, seeing, hearing, and doing, would fit them so much better for the
life-work before them. Squeers' method was a wiser one. We think less of
it than of the delightful caricature, which makes Squeers "a joy for