So it
came to pass that although the Doctor and Mr. Peacocke were really
intimate, and that something of absolute friendship sprang up between the
two ladies, when Mr. Peacocke had already been more than twelve months in
Bowick neither had he nor Mrs. Peacocke broken bread in the Doctor's
house.

And yet the friendship had become strong. An incident had happened early
in the year which had served greatly to strengthen it. At the school
there was a little boy, just eleven years old, the only son of a Lady De
Lawle, who had in early years been a dear friend to Mrs. Wortle. Lady De
Lawle was the widow of a baronet, and the little boy was the heir to a
large fortune. The mother had been most loath to part with her treasure.
Friends, uncles, and trustees had declared that the old prescribed form of
education for British aristocrats must be followed,--a t'other school,
namely, then Eton, and then Oxford. No; his mother might not go with him,
first to one, and then to the other. Such going and living with him would
deprive his education of all the real salt. Therefore Bowick was chosen
as the t'other school, because Mrs. Wortle would be more like a mother to
the poor desolate boy than any other lady. So it was arranged, and the
"poor desolate boy" became the happiest of the young pickles whom it was
Mrs. Wortle's special province to spoil whenever she could get hold of
them.

Now it happened that on one beautiful afternoon towards the end of April,
Mrs. Wortle had taken young De Lawle and another little boy with her over
the foot-bridge which passed from the bottom of the parsonage garden to
the glebe-meadow which ran on the other side of a little river, and with
them had gone a great Newfoundland dog, who was on terms equally friendly
with the inmates of the Rectory and the school. Where this bridge passed
across the stream the gardens and the field were on the same level. But
as the water ran down to the ground on which the school-buildings had been
erected, there arose a steep bank over a bend in the river, or, rather,
steep cliff; for, indeed, it was almost perpendicular, the force of the
current as it turned at this spot having washed away the bank. In this
way it had come to pass that there was a precipitous fall of about a dozen
feet from the top of the little cliff into the water, and that the water
here, as it eddied round the curve, was black and deep, so that the bigger
boys were wont to swim in it, arra