d
thoughtfulness. And I can assure you he has watched the experiment ever
since with great satisfaction. Ah! not one of you boys will ever know
the anxiety you have given him, or the care with which he has watched
over every step in your school lives."

Up to this time Tom had never given wholly in to or understood the
Doctor. At first he had thoroughly feared him. For some years, as I have
tried to show, he had learnt to regard him with love and respect, and
to think him a very great and wise and good man. But as regarded his own
position in the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea
of giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a
very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was wont to boast
that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made
up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was
now quite a different place from what it was when he first came. And,
indeed, though he didn't actually boast of it, yet in his secret soul
he did to a great extent believe that the great reform in the School
had been owing quite as much to himself as to any one else. Arthur,
he acknowledged, had done him good, and taught him a good deal; so had
other boys in different ways, but they had not had the same means of
influence on the School in general. And as for the Doctor, why, he was
a splendid master; but every one knew that masters could do very little
out of school hours. In short, he felt on terms of equality with his
chief, so far as the social state of the School was concerned, and
thought that the Doctor would find it no easy matter to get on without
him. Moreover, his School Toryism was still strong, and he looked still
with some jealousy on the Doctor, as somewhat of a fanatic in the matter
of change, and thought it very desirable for the School that he should
have some wise person (such as himself) to look sharply after vested
School-rights, and see that nothing was done to the injury of the
republic without due protest.

It was a new light to him to find that, besides teaching the sixth, and
governing and guiding the whole School, editing classics, and writing
histories, the great headmaster had found time in those busy years
to watch over the career even of him, Tom Brown, and his particular
friends, and, no doubt, of fifty other boys at the same time, and all
this without taking the least credit to himself, or seeming to know, or