red curtains. It was a perfect paradise to my imagination. Nor did the
appearance of Mr Elder at all jar with the vision of coming happiness.
His round, rosy, spectacled face bore in it no premonitory suggestion
of birch or rod, and although I continued at his school for six years,
I never saw him use either. If a boy required that kind of treatment,
he sent him home. When my uncle left me, it was in more than
contentment with my lot. Nor did anything occur to alter my feeling
with regard to it. I soon became much attached to Mrs Elder. She was
just the woman for a schoolmaster's wife--as full of maternity as she
could hold, but childless. By the end of the first day I thought I
loved her far more than my aunt. My aunt had done her duty towards me;
but how was a child to weigh that? She had taken no trouble to make me
love her; she had shown me none of the signs of affection, and I could
not appreciate the proofs of it yet.

I soon perceived a great difference between my uncle's way of teaching
and that of Mr Elder. My uncle always appeared aware of something
behind which pressed upon, perhaps hurried, the fact he was making me
understand. He made me feel, perhaps too much, that it was a mere step
towards something beyond. Mr Elder, on the other hand, placed every
point in such a strong light that it seemed in itself of primary
consequence. Both were, if my judgment after so many years be correct,
admirable teachers--my uncle the greater, my school-master the more
immediately efficient. As I was a manageable boy to the very verge of
weakness, the relations between us were entirely pleasant.

There were only six more pupils, all of them sufficiently older than
myself to be ready to pet and indulge me. No one who saw me mounted on
the back of the eldest, a lad of fifteen, and driving four of them in
hand, while the sixth ran alongside as an outrider--could have wondered