confide in you, and to have the kindness to hear a word or two from
me in my defence?'

'Defence?' Mr. Crisparkle repeated. 'You are not on your defence,
Mr. Neville.'

'I think I am, sir. At least I know I should be, if you were
better acquainted with my character.'

'Well, Mr. Neville,' was the rejoinder. 'What if you leave me to
find it out?'

'Since it is your pleasure, sir,' answered the young man, with a
quick change in his manner to sullen disappointment: 'since it is
your pleasure to check me in my impulse, I must submit.'

There was that in the tone of this short speech which made the
conscientious man to whom it was addressed uneasy. It hinted to
him that he might, without meaning it, turn aside a trustfulness
beneficial to a mis-shapen young mind and perhaps to his own power
of directing and improving it. They were within sight of the
lights in his windows, and he stopped.

'Let us turn back and take a turn or two up and down, Mr. Neville,
or you may not have time to finish what you wish to say to me. You
are hasty in thinking that I mean to check you. Quite the
contrary. I invite your confidence.'

'You have invited it, sir, without knowing it, ever since I came
here. I say "ever since," as if I had been here a week. The truth