Mr. Mouncey supplemented the instruction they received at the village school with informal classes held of an evening in his large old dining-room. He had had no intention of founding an orphanage. A desire to befriend a poor woman who had lost her husband, and two young lads who had been deprived of both father and elder brother by an accident at the mill, had led to the opening of the cottage. Other orphan lads in the neighbourhood, who must otherwise have been sent to the nearest workhouse, were, as time went on, placed in it. Sometimes friends at a distance asked the vicar to take charge of a forlorn lad; but, as a rule, the inmates of the cottage were boys whose antecedents were well known to Sebastian Mouncey. Gus was the first who came there with a stigma upon him—a boy who had associated with thieves.
But Mr. Mouncey had a welcome for him, not alone because of the generous way in which the colonel, whilst prophesying to Mr. Mouncey the disappointment of his hopes, had been ever ready to open his purse to increase the funds by which the cottage home was maintained; but also because the utter friendlessness of the boy was a sure passport to Sebastian's heart.
He kept to himself all that the colonel had told him of Gus' history. The boy should not begin his new life at Rayleigh with an ill name. And whatever fears the vicar might have concerning his new charge, he showed no suspicion of him. Nothing could be kinder than the way in which he welcomed Gus.
Gus, as he looked into his face, and met the glance of Mr. Mouncey's kind, earnest eyes, said to himself, "A gentleman—one of the right sort." And this conviction deepened in the boy's mind as he came to know Sebastian Mouncey better. His was indeed the gentle heart from which springs the gentle life.
As for Mr. Mouncey, he was delightfully surprised at the appearance of the boy committed to his care. Simple-hearted as a child himself, and frank almost to eccentricity, he was quick to feel the charm of the boy's artless grace. Gus was not at all the kind of boy he expected to see. He was not a boy of a low type. There was no sign of deceit, meanness, or rascality on his small, well-formed features. The clergyman looked at him, and marvelled.
It was curious how quickly the two came to understand each other. A bond was forged between them from the hour of their meeting.
Gus got on well with the boys in the cottage home. He was friendly with them all, but he made no special friend of any one. It was the vicar who was his friend.
Mr. Mouncey soon discovered that the boy had unusual abilities. He took trouble and sacrificed time in order to give Gus further instruction than he obtained at the village school. He began to teach him Latin, and was astonished at the rapidity with which he mastered the rudiments of that language. Once when the vicar was teaching him, Gus let fall a word which showed that his father had understood Latin.
"Your father?" said Mr. Mouncey in surprise. "Then he was an educated man?"
"My father was a gentleman once," said Gus, with unconscious dignity.