ing would
stop in his head. They nicknamed him Jacob Doodle-calf.

But above all there was Harry Winburn, the quickest and best boy in the
parish. He might be a year older than Tom, but was very little bigger,
and he was the Crichton of our village boys. He could wrestle and climb
and run better than all the rest, and learned all that the schoolmaster
could teach him faster than that worthy at all liked. He was a boy to
be proud of, with his curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active
figure, and little ears and hands and feet, "as fine as a lord's," as
Charity remarked to Tom one day, talking, as usual, great nonsense.
Lords' hands and ears and feet are just as ugly as other folk's when
they are children, as any one may convince himself if he likes to look.
Tight boots and gloves, and doing nothing with them, I allow make a
difference by the time they are twenty.

Now that Benjy was laid on the shelf, and his young brothers were still
under petticoat government, Tom, in search of companions, began to
cultivate the village boys generally more and more. Squire Brown, be it
said, was a true-blue Tory to the backbone, and believed honestly that
the powers which be were ordained of God, and that loyalty and steadfast
obedience were men's first duties. Whether it were in consequence or in
spite of his political creed, I do not mean to give an opinion, though
I have one; but certain it is that he held therewith divers social
principles not generally supposed to be true blue in colour. Foremost of
these, and the one which the Squire loved to propound above all others,
was the belief that a man is to be valued wholly and solely for that
which he is in himself, for that which stands up in the four fleshly
walls of him, apart from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals
whatsoever. Which belief I take to be a wholesome corrective of all
political opinions, and, if held sincerely, to make all opinions equally
harmless, whether they be blue, red, or green. As a necessary corollary
to this belief, Squire Brown held further that it didn't matter a
straw whether his son associated with lords' sons or ploughmen's sons,
provided they were brave and honest. He himself had played football
and gone bird-nesting with the farmers whom he met at vestry and
the labourers who tilled their fields, and so had his father and
grandfather, with their progenitors. So he encouraged Tom in his
intimacy with the boys of the village, and forwarde