Once during the spring Lawrence Thornton came again to Beechwood, renewing his acquaintance with Mildred, who, comparing him with other boys of her acquaintance, regarded him as something more than mortal, and after he was gone, she was never weary of his praises. Once in speaking of him to her teacher, Miss Harcourt, she said, “He’s the handsomest boy I ever saw, and he knows so much, too. I’d give the world if Oliver was like him,” and Mildred’s sigh as she thought of poor lame Oliver was echoed by the white-faced boy without the door, who had come up just in time to hear her remarks. He, too, had greatly admired Lawrence Thornton, and it had, perhaps, been some satisfaction to believe that Mildred had not observed the difference between them, but he knew, now, that she had, and with a bitter pang, as he thought of his deformity, he took his accustomed seat in the school-room. “I can never be like Lawrence Thornton,” he said to himself. “I shall always be lame, and small, and sickly, and by and by, maybe, Milly will cease to love me.” Dark, indeed, would be his life, when the sun of Mildred’s love for him was set, and his tears fell fast, erasing the figures he was making on his slate. “What is it, Olly?” and Mildred nestled close by his side, taking his thin hand in her own chubby ones and looking into his face. Without the least reserve he told her what it was, and Mildred’s tears mingled with his as he said that his twisted feet were a continual canker worm,—a blight on all his hopes of the future when he should have attained the years of a man. The cloud was very heavy from which Mildred could not extract some comfort, and after a moment she looked up cheerily, and said: “I tell you, Oliver, you can’t be as handsome as Lawrence, nor as tall, nor have such nice straight feet, but you can be as good a scholar, and when folks speak of that Mr. Hawkins, who knows so much, I shall be so proud, for I shall know it is Oliver they mean.” All unconsciously Mildred was sowing in Oliver’s mind the first seeds of ambition, though not of a worldly kind. He did not care for the world. He cared only for the opinion of the little brown-eyed maiden at his side. It is true he would have endured any amount of torture if, in the end, he might look like Lawrence Thornton; but as this could not be, he determined to resemble him in something,—to read the same books,—to learn the same things,—to be able to talk about the same places, and if, in the end, _she_ said he was equal to Lawrence Thornton, he would be satisfied. So he toiled both early and late, far outstripping Mildred and winning golden laurels, in the opinion of Miss Harcourt and the Judge, the latter of whom became, in spite of himself, deeply interested in the pale student, who before three years were gone, was fully equal to his teacher.