“Yes—I’ve written.” But I didn’t add—for the hour—that my letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to gloss¹ over any recent little friction². They performed the dizziest feats³ of arithmetic, soaring quite out of my feeble range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical⁴ and historical jokes. It was conspicuous⁵ of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery⁶ that no words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated⁷ view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant⁸ gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced⁹ the enigma¹⁰ of what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy

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