Oliver had assured himself that he had long ago got over the boyish weakness—barely excusable in a boy, and the paltriest of all follies in a man—which, to do men justice, a large proportion of them cast off with the growth of their beards, of wincing under the knowledge that his father had been in trade—in the primitive trade—of a baker. Oliver had fancied he had well-nigh forgotten the sneaking sense of affront at the pit whence he had been dug. But it seemed the sillier and more Jeames-like a social definition was, the more it stuck in the consciousness of its victim. Oliver, to his disgust, experienced a sensation of personal discomfort, an inclination to avoid public attention, when he walked into the Friarton bake-shop in the light of the heir come to take possession. He had to relieve his self-disgust by defying his self-consciousness, standing up as large as life and lounging purposely in the sight of the bystanders for a few minutes. He had to sit down in the retirement of the back-shop and smoke a pipe to recover his equanimity as he meditated on the manliness of Thackeray’s Philip on his way through the world, bowing with perfect nonchalance and satisfaction from the ‘knife-board’ of an omnibus, to his fashionable friends in their carriages. Oliver ended by recalling the occasion when as a small boy he was led by his father through the same premises, then in the process of building. Little Oliver had enjoyed the inspection at least as much as his father had enjoyed making it with him, and had listened with pride while the owner of the place told the child—when there was no thought of Oliver’s developing into a scholar—a gentleman far above such low aims as baking and selling bread—that the buildings would be his one day—he should get the chief good out of them after they had paid their cost to the builder. ‘And you’ll make something worth while out of them, Nolly? You’ll be up to all the new improvements that ain’t mere catchpennies? You’ll bake and sell the best and cheapest bread in the county—won’t you now, my little chap?’ ‘Yes, Far’er,’ little Oliver had answered, with unhesitating cheerfulness, as children will undertake without doubt or fear to conquer kingdoms. After that recollection, Oliver had only to rise and perform a pantomime of freeing his arms from an encumbrance, to get rid of what shreds remained of that parti-coloured garment of the conventional fool, which we have most of us considerable difficulty to escape from wearing, each in his turn.