Pickering, who had appeared to me in glimpses as a
sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was a widower--a
fact which seemed to produce in him a sort of preternatural concentration
of parental dignity. He was a majestic man, with a hooked nose, a keen
dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions of his own as to how a boy--or
his boy, at any rate--should be brought up. First and foremost, he was
to be a "gentleman"; which seemed to mean, chiefly, that he was always to
wear a muffler and gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of bread
and milk, at eight o'clock. School-life, on experiment, seemed hostile
to these observances, and Eugene was taken home again, to be moulded into
urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was provided for him, and a
single select companion was prescribed. The choice, mysteriously, fell
on me, born as I was under quite another star; my parents were appealed
to, and I was allowed for a few months to have my lessons with Eugene.
The tutor, I think, must have been rather a snob, for Eugene was treated
like a prince, while I got all the questions and the raps with the ruler.
And yet I remember never being jealous of my happier comrade, and
striking up, for the time, one of those friendships of childhood.
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