Ishmael Worth could very well afford to practice forbearance towards

these ill-conditioned lads. He was no longer the poor, sickly, and

self-doubting child he had been but a year previous. Though still

delicate as to his physique, it was with an elegant, refined rather than

a feeble and sickly delicacy. He grew very much like his father, who was

one of the handsomest men of his day; but it was from his mother that he

derived his sweet voice and his beautiful peculiarity of smiling only

with his eyes. His school-life had, besides, taught him more than book

learning; it had taught him self-knowledge. He had been forced to

measure himself with others, and find out his relative moral and

intellectual standing. His success at school, and the appreciation he

received from others, had endowed him with a self-respect and confidence

easily noticeable in the modest dignity and grace of his air and manner.

In these respects also his deportment formed a favorable contrast to the

shame-faced, half-sullen, and half-defiant behavior of the Burghes.

These boys were the only enemies Ishmael possessed in the school; his

sweetness of spirit had, on the contrary, made him many friends. He was

ever ready to do any kindness to anyone; to give up his own pleasure for

the convenience of others; to help forward a backward pupil, or to

enlighten a dull one. This goodness gained him grateful partisans among

the boys; but he had, also, disinterested ones among the girls.

Claudia and Beatrice were his self-constituted little lady-patronesses.

The Burghes did not dare to sneer at Ishmael's humble position in their

presence. For, upon the very first occasion that Alfred had ventured a

sarcasm at the expense of Ishmael in her hearing, Claudia had so shamed

him for insulting a youth to whose bravery he was indebted for his life,

that even Master Alfred had had the grace to blush, and ever afterward

had avoided exposing himself to a similar scorching.

In this little world of the schoolroom there was a little unconscious

drama beginning to be performed.

I said that Claudia and Beatrice had constituted themselves the little

lady-patronesses of the poor boy. But there was a difference in their

manner towards their protégé.

The dark-eyed, dark-haired, imperious young heiress patronized him in a

right royal manner, trotting him out, as it were, for the inspection of

her friends, and calling their attention to his merits--so surprising in

a boy of his station; very much, I say, as she would have exhibited the

accomplishments of her dog, Fido, so wonderful in a brute! very much,

ah! as duchesses patronize promising young poets.

This was at times so humiliating to Ishmael that his self-respect must

have suffered terribly, fatally, but for Beatrice.

The fair-haired, blue-eyed, and gentle Bee had a much finer, more

delicate, sensitive, and susceptible nature than her cousin; she

understood Ishmael better, and sympathized with him more than Claudia

could. She loved and respected him as an elder brother, and indeed more

than she did her elder brothers; for he was much superior to both in

physical, moral, and intellectual beauty. Bee felt all this so deeply

that she honored in Ishmael her ideal of what a boy ought to be, and

what she wished her brothers to become.



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