At school, though it was better, yet it was bad. For he was ten
times as much laughed at for his new clothes, though they were of
the plainest, as he had been for his old rags. Still he bore all
the pangs of unwelcome advancement without a grumble, for the sake
of his friend alone, whose dog he remained as much as ever. But his
past life of cold and neglect, and hunger and blows, and
homelessness and rags, began to glimmer as in the distance of a
vaporous sunset, and the loveless freedom he had then enjoyed gave
it a bloom as of summer-roses.

I wonder whether there may not have been in some unknown corner of
the old lady's mind this lingering remnant of paganism, that, in
reclaiming the outcast from the error of his ways, she was making an
offering acceptable to that God whom her mere prayers could not move
to look with favour upon her prodigal son Andrew. Nor from her own
acknowledged religious belief as a background would it have stuck so
fiery off either. Indeed, it might have been a partial corrective
of some yet more dreadful articles of her creed,--which she held, be
it remembered, because she could not help it.




CHAPTER XI.

PRIVATE INTERVIEWS.

The winter passed slowly away. Robert and Shargar went to school
together, and learned their lessons together at Mrs. Falconer's