As for Val, after the kind thought which made him send for Dick and warmly plead his cause with the boat-builder on the river-side, there were moments when he felt a certain embarrassment about what he had done. Dick, too, had changed, as well as himself. He could not speak to him as of old, or give him half-crowns, or trust to him to do whatever he wished. In the last case, indeed, he might have trusted Dick entirely; for his gratitude, and what is more, his affection, for his young patron, was unbounded. But Val no longer liked to suggest what Dick would have been but too happy to do. The vagrant whom he had taken up had become in a manner Val’s equal. He was wiser than the other, though he did not know a tenth part so much; and though he owed everything he was to Val’s boyish interposition in his favour, yet he had a great deal in him which Val had not originated, and which, indeed, was quite beyond him. The undergraduate of high degree did not know how to treat the young man who was still so lowly. He could not ask him to his rooms, or bid him to eat at his own table, half out of a lingering social prejudice, half because he had an uncomfortable knowledge of what people would say. He was as much his friend as ever, but he did not know how to show it. Now and then he went to the little house, but Dick’s mother gave him sensations so very strange that he did not care to go often; and had he gone very often, his tutor, no doubt, would have taken notice of the fact, and set it down to a love of low society, as his Eton tutor had done; altogether, the situation was full of embarrassment, and the intercourse not half so easy as it had been. To be sure, the external advantages were certain; Dick had a much better situation and a bright prospect before him, and this was so much gained. Val’s advice to him about rising in the world had been wonderfully carried out. He had risen in the world, and got on the steps of the ladder. Indeed, Dick might almost have been said to have attained all that a person of his class could ever attain; he might make a great deal more money, but he could not materially advance his position. Val was still, and perhaps more than ever, above him, since as they both progressed into manhood, their respective positions began to be more sharply defined: and nothing in the world could ever make it possible for Lord Eskside’s heir to say to the young boat-builder, “Come up higher.” And yet Val had lost all power of treating him as an inferior. It was a curious problem, infinitely more difficult, as was natural, to the generous young fellow on the higher level, than to the lowlier lad who made no pretensions to any sort of dignity, and never “stood upon” a quality which he did not suppose himself to possess.