136 THE STORY OF MY LIFE [1843
Tented my mother from thinking much about parting with me.
One miserable morning Mr. Kilvert, Mrs. Pile, and I went with my mother and Lea to the station at Chippenham. Terrible indeed was the moment when the train came up and I flung myself first into Lea's arms and then into my mother's. Mrs. Pile did her best to comfort me — but .... there was no comfort.
Several boys slept in a room together at Harnish. In mine there was at first only one other, who was one of the greatest boy-blackguards I ever came across — wicked, malicious, and hypocritical. He made my life indescribably miserable. One day, however, whilst we were wearily plodding through • our morning lessons, I saw a pleasant gentlemanlike boy come through the gate, who was introduced to us as Alick MacSween. He was thirteen, so much older than any of the others, and he was very good-looking, at least we thought so then, and we used to apply to him the line in our Syntax —
" Ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris."
It was a great joy to find myself transferred to his room, and he soon became a hero in my eyes. Imagination endowed him with every grace, and I am sure, on looking back, that he really was a very nice boy. Gradually I had the delight of feeling assured that Alick liked me as much as I liked him. We became everything to each other, and shared our "lockers'' in school, and our little gardens in play-hours. Our affection made sunshine in the dreari-gst a horde of young savages was anything but, comforting. Hut my nervous teniperament was tortured with the idea that my mother would die before I saw her again (I had road a story of thisdetermined toed the gipsies as his intermediaries. through, the hot lanes. I always liked this expedition and scram-is a safe punishment for naughtiness, more safe, I think, than giving a reward for goodness. c If you are naughty I must punish you,' is often a necessary threat: but it is not good to hold out ad (J<><1 to forgive him for !*'in^ so nau^Imhr- and the most attractive in Florence. thru