The schoolmaster's heart was touched, though he was pretty well used to tears. But Gratian's seemed different somehow.
"What is it, my boy?" he said again.
"It's—it's just that, sir—lessons, I mean. I did try, sir. I meant to work with a will, I did indeed."
"But you did do better. I knew you were trying," said the teacher quietly.
Gratian lifted his tear stained face and looked at the master in surprise.
"Did you, sir?" he said. "It seemed to me to go worser and worser."
"No, I didn't think so. And sometimes, Gratian, when we think we are doing worse, it shows we are really doing better. We're getting up a little higher, you see, and beginning to look on and to see how far we have to go, and that we might have got on faster. When we're not climbing at all, but just staying lazily at the foot of the hill, we don't know anything about how steep and high it is."
Gratian had quite left off crying by now and was listening attentively. The master's words needed no explanation to him; he had caught the sense and meaning at once.
"Everybody has to work if they're to do any good, haven't they, sir?" he asked.