“I am sorry for that; I hunted it up for you out of my old nursery. Nobody had touched the things for thirty years.” “It is very pretty--outside,” Jock said, eying the gilding, “but I don’t care much about little boys,” he added, with dignity, “I don’t know what it means.” “That is because you are so little, my dear.” “Oh, no, because I--don’t understand it. I have read much nicer books; the ‘History of the Plague,’ that was what I liked best, better than ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ as good as the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’” “How old-fashioned the child is!” Lady Randolph said. “Will you come with us to see the school where Lucy wishes you to go?” “Lucy did not wish it,” said the boy, “it was me, I told her. I will go, because I suppose it is the right thing. You can’t grow up to be a giant, or even a common man, without going to school. I do not like it at all, but it is the right thing to do.” “You are a wise little man,” said Lady Randolph, “and do you think you may perhaps grow up a giant, Jock?” “Not in tallness,” Jock said. He looked at her with something like contempt, and she was cowed in spite of herself. His very reticence impressed her, for he relapsed into silence, and gave no further explanation, not caring even to describe in what, if not in tallness, he expected to be a giant; and the two sat and looked at each other for a minute in silence. They looked very unlikely antagonists, but it was not the least important of the two who was most nervous. Lady Randolph felt as if it was she who was the inexperienced, the uninstructed one. She did not like to venture out of her depth again. “Will you go and get your hat and come with us? You must be very kind to Lucy, and not worry her. You know she does not want you to leave her; but also, you know, little Jock--” Lady Randolph looked at him with a little alarm, feeling that his big eyes saw through and through her, and not knowing what weird insight might be in them, or what strange thing he might say. But Jock’s answer was to get up, and put away his book. “I am going,” he said. It was the old lady who was afraid of him. She sat and watched him, and was glad when he was gone. Lucy was comprehensible and manageable, but the child dismayed and troubled her. Poor little forlorn boy! There was no home for him anywhere, no one to care for him but Lucy, who no doubt would form, as people say, “other ties.”