What has all this to do with our story? Well, my dear boys, let a fellow
go on his own way, or you won't get anything out of him worth having.
I must show you what sort of a man it was who had begotten and trained
little Arthur, or else you won't believe in him, which I am resolved you
shall do; and you won't see how he, the timid, weak boy, had points in
him from which the bravest and strongest recoiled, and made his presence
and example felt from the first on all sides, unconsciously to himself,
and without the least attempt at proselytizing. The spirit of his father
was in him, and the Friend to whom his father had left him did not
neglect the trust.
After supper that night, and almost nightly for years afterwards,
Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one,
sometimes another, of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible
together, and talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly
astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur read
the book and talked about the men and women whose lives were there told.
The first night they happened to fall on the chapters about the famine
in Egypt, and Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living
statesman--just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform
Bill, only that they were much more living realities to him. The book
was to him, Tom saw, the most vivid and delightful history of real
people, who might do right or wrong, just like any one who was walking
about in Rugby--the Doctor, or the masters, or the sixth-form boys.
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