However, he took the money.
CHAPTER V.
Years passed away. Paul grew up a quiet, unpretending boy, with a shy look and awkward behavior.
Generally he kept apart, and, while he took care of the twins, would sit for hours working at some wood-carving without saying a single word. He was what one calls in his part of the country “fussy:” a nature inclined to worry about details and brooding anxiously by himself.
He had no intercourse with any boys of his age, not even in school. Not that he avoided them on purpose; on the contrary, he liked to help them, and more than one used to copy, in the morning before prayers, his arithmetic problems or his German composition; but their interests were not his, and therefore he could not befriend them.
He also got an abundance of thrashings; especially from the brothers Erdmann—two saucy, wild-eyed fellows, loved and feared as the strongest and most daring—he had much to suffer. They were inexhaustible in the invention of new tricks which imbittered his life: they threw his copy-books on the top of the stove, filled his satchel with sand, and let his cap, in which they put a stick for a mast, float down the river like a boat. Most of these injuries he bore patiently; only once or twice a blind fury came over him. Then he bit and scratched like a madman, so that even those companions who were much stronger than he wisely took to flight. The first time one of the boys had called his father a drunkard, and another time they wanted to lock him up in a dark cow-shed with a little girl.
Afterwards he was ashamed, and came of his own accord to beg pardon. Then they only laughed at him the more, and the hardly-won respect was lost again.
Learning went on with great difficulty. The task for which his comrades hardly needed fifteen minutes he required an hour or two to finish. On the other hand, his handwriting was like copper-plate and there never was a mistake in his sums.