“I’m a miserable, unhappy wretch,” I said, as I threw myself in a chair which resented the rough usage by creaking violently and threatening to break one leg. “Nobody likes me. I’m always getting into trouble, and every one will be glad when I am gone to Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay.”
I sat scowling down at the floor, thinking of how the others made friends and were regular companions, while I was almost avoided—at any rate, not sought out.
“Is it all my fault?” I thought; and that day I had a very long think as I wondered why I was so different from other fellows of my age. I believed I was affectionate, for I felt very miserable when I saw my father off with his regiment four years before, and he sailed for the Madras Presidency, and I went back home with my mind made up to work hard at my studies; to look well after my mother and Grace; and always to be a gentleman in every act and thought.
And as I sat there in the silence of my own room, I asked myself whether I had done exactly as my father had wished.
“I might have worked harder,” I owned. “I might have been more of a gentleman. But I did try.”
Then I began thinking that I had given my mother a good deal of trouble before she and Grace went out to join my father at Madras.
“But mamma did not mind,” I said to myself, for nothing could have been more loving than our parting, when I was so miserable at being left that I felt as if everything were at an end.
“The fellows don’t understand me,” I said at last. “And now if I try to be extra civil to any one of them, they all laugh and think I mean something—want to borrow money, or get another favour.”
This had been at the bottom of the quarrel that morning, and as I sat there thinking, I grew more and more roused, giving myself the credit of being shamefully ill-used by every one, from General Crucie and the professors, down to the newest comer, while the governor seemed to me to be the greatest offender.
“Boasts about understanding boys and young men,” I said bitterly, “and does not know how to be just. I wish I was out of it all, and could go away, so that I could be where people understood me, and—”