ou 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."

A NEW LIGHT.

Up to this time, Tom had never wholly given in to or understood the
Doctor. At first he had thoroughly feared him. For some years, as I
have tried to show, he had learned 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 the 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[50] 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[51] School rights, and see that nothing was done to the injury
of the republic without due protest.

[50] #Toryism#: here, adherence to the established customs of
the School.

[51] #Vested#: long established; fixed.

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 lea