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.