The boy gave one scornful glance in the direction of the schoolmaster, lowered his eyes to the printed page, and was instantly absorbed.
The schoolmaster felt that he was dismissed. He had been weighed in the balance, and found wanting in sympathy and insight, a mere stupid looker-on at the outside of things. Five minutes ago the boy had welcomed him. Now, it was as though the child had risen with the royal prerogative, and closed the interview. The schoolmaster sighed deeply.
The boy looked up. His eyes were the color of a still pool in a Devonshire trout stream, brown, with olive-green shadows, suggesting depths unfathomable. The schoolmaster instantly seized upon the small concession, exclaiming: “I came here every day in the hope of seeing you again, and now that you are here, you sit and read. Don’t you think it’s rather unkind?”
The boy flushed hotly, and once more the transforming smile illumined his face as he said: “You came here on purpose to see me? Why?”
“Well, you see, I’ve known a good many boys in my time, and I thought you seemed a bit lonely....”
The hungry eyes devoured him, and the schoolmaster stopped in the middle of his sentence, for, like all Englishmen, he dreaded any manifestation of feeling, and the boy looked as if he were about to cry. His fears were groundless, however, for the child only said: “How many boys have you known?”
“Rather over a thousand, I fancy. You see, it has been my business to have to do with boys for over twenty years.”
“Over a thousand boys—and I don’t know one! How unfair things are, and beastly.”
The boy looked enviously at the grizzled man who had known so many boys; and the man looked pityingly at this boy who seemed to have been somehow cheated of all that makes youth joyous.
“How is it you have no friends of your own age?” he said presently. “Why don’t you beg your aunts to send you to school? You’d probably get stronger directly you got there, with the regular games and busy life.”