did not admire him, and unless
you admired Tommy he was always a boor in your presence, shy and
self-distrustful. Especially was this so if you were a lady (how
amazingly he got on in after years with some of you, what agony others
endured till he went away!), and it is the chief reason why there are
such contradictory accounts of him to-day.

Sometimes Mr. Cathro had hopes of him other than those that could only
be revealed in a shameful whisper with the door shut. "Not so bad," he
might say to Mr. McLean; "if he keeps it up we may squeeze him through
yet, without trusting to--to what I was fool enough to mention to you.
The mathematics are his weak point, there's nothing practical about him
(except when it's needed to carry out his devil's designs) and he cares
not a doit about the line A B, nor what it's doing in the circle K, but
there's whiles he surprises me when we're at Homer. He has the spirit
o't, man, even when he bogles at the sense."

But the next time Ivie called for a report--!

In his great days, so glittering, so brief (the days of the penny Life)
Tommy, looking back to this year, was sure that he had never really
tried to work. But he had. He did his very best, doggedly, wearily
sitting at the round table till Elspeth feared that he was killing
himself and gave him a melancholy comfort by saying so. An hour
afterwards he might discover that he had been far away from his books,
looking on at his affecting death and counting the mourners at the
funeral.

Had he thought that Grizel's discovery was making her unhappy he would
have melted at once, but never did she look so proud as when she
scornfully passed him by, and he wagged his head complacently over her
coming chagrin when she heard that he had carried the highest bursary.
Then she would know what she had flung away. This should have helped him
to another struggle with his lexicon, but it only provided a breeze for
the kite, which flew so strong that he had to let go the string.

Aaron and the Dominie met one day in the square, and to Aaron's surprise
Mr. Cathro's despondency about Tommy was more pronounced than before.
"I wonder at that," the warper said, "for I assure you he has been
harder 'at it than ever thae last nights. What's more, he used to look
doleful as he sat at his table, but I notice now that he's as sweer to
leave off as he's keen to begin, and the face of him is a' eagerness
too, and he reads ower to himself what he has wrote