So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw
that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight.
"Why, the candle's out!" I then cried.
"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles.
XVIII
The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly:
"Have you written, miss?"
"Yes--I've written." But I didn't add--for the hour--that my letter,
sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time
enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village.
Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant,
more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart
to gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats
of arithmetic, soaring quite out of MY feeble range, and perpetrated,
in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes.
It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared
to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory,
really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate;
there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed;
never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness
and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman.
I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my
initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged
sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of
what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty.
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