“It isn't the same thing.”
“What's the difference?”
And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. “Stealing is stealing,” he would have it, “whether you take it off a tree or out of a basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a piece?”
The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all had a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so. It did not agitate him in the least.
To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me, and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes confusion. The yearly examination was approaching. My father and mother said nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how much I had endeavoured. I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make others believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of school.
“Are you going in for anything, Dan?” I asked him. We were discussing the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.
I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to ask it of me.
“They're not giving away anything I particularly want,” murmured Dan, in his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it must be confessed, not worth their cost.
“You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?” he asked next, as I expected.
“I mean to have a shot at the History,” I admitted. “Wish I was better at dates.”