patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our
self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us?
But the truth is, the Doctor was easy and indulgent to a fault, and
dreaded nothing so much, save telling a lie, as hurting people's
feelings; besides, as the acknowledged wise man of Whitbury, he was a
little proud of playing the Maecenas; and he had, and not unjustly,
a high, opinion of John Briggs's powers. So he had lent him books,
corrected his taste in many matters, and, by dint of petting and
humouring, had kept the wayward youth half-a-dozen times from running
away from his father, who was an apothecary in the town, and from the
general practitioner, Mr. Bolus, under whom John Briggs fulfilled the
office of co-assistant with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had
both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very
different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the
most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine
his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything
which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly
fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all
things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual
Platonic universe), that Bolus told his father,--"In hours, sir, he
takes care of my business as well as I could myself; but out of hours,
sir, I believe he is possessed by seven devils."

John Briggs, on the other hand, sinned in the very opposite direction.
Too proud to learn his business, and too proud also to play the
scapegrace as Tom did, he neglected alike work and amusement, for lazy
mooning over books, and the dreams which books called up. He made
perpetual mistakes in the shop; and then considered himself insulted
by an "inferior spirit," if poor Bolus called him to account for it.
Indeed, had it not been for many applications of that "precious oil of