"Oh, that will be all right," he said.
It was all so comfortable and simple, so obvious indeed, that I laughed
to think of the bitter and miserable reveries I had indulged in when he
was taken from me, and when the stay of my life seemed gone. The whole
incident seemed to give me back a touch of the serenity which I had
lost, and I saw how beautifully this joy of meeting had been planned for
me, when I wanted it most. Presently he said that he must go off for a
lesson, and asked me to come with him and see the children. We went into
a big class-room, where some boys and girls were assembling. Here he was
exactly the same as ever; no sentiment, but just a kind of bluff
paternal kindness. The lesson was most informal--a good deal of
questioning and answering; it was a biographical lecture, but devoted,
I saw, in a simple way, to tracing the development of the hero's
character. "What made him do that?" was a constant question. The answers
were most ingenious and extraordinarily lively; but the order was
perfect. At the end he called up two or three children who had shown
some impatience or jealousy in the lesson, and said a few half-humorous
words to them, with an air of affectionate interest.
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