True, Arthur was always pleasant, and
even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated
with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in
a wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility;
and though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself yet
somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken
on him without thinking about it, head over heels in fact, was the
centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him
or mar him, his appointed work and trial for the time being. And Tom
was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and
perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness
and thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and well-principled boy must,
when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self
and the devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the
School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four
others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite
according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers,
or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe
Jennings's beer, and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a
relish.
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