 next week
to see Tom, before she went to a boarding-school with Lucy.
    If you think a lad of thirteen would not have been so childish, you must be
an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling,
requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a
beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the
looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there
were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like
other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a »public.«
 

                                   Chapter V

                             Maggie's Second Visit

This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for some time
they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of
temperament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and in Philip the
transition seemed to have begun: there was no malignity in his disposition, but
there was a susceptibility that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of
repulsion. The ox - we may venture to assert it on the authority of a great
classic - is not given to use his teeth as an instrument of attack; and Tom was
an excellent bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly ingenious
bovine manner; but he had blundered on Philip's tenderest point, and had caused
him as much acute pain as if he had studied the means with the nicest precision
and the most envenomed spite. Tom saw no reason why they should not make up this
quarrel as they had done many others, by behaving as if nothing had happened;
for though he had never before said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this
idea had so habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation between
himself and his dubious schoolfellow, whom he could neither like nor dislike,
that the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it did to Philip.
And he had a right to say so, when Philip hectored over him, and called him
names. But perceiving that his first advances towards amity were not met, he
relapsed into his least favourable disposition towards Philip, and resolved
never to appeal to him either about drawing or exercises again. They were only
so far civil to each other as was necessary to prevent their state of feud from
being observed by Mr. Stelling, who would have »put down« such nonsense with
great vigour.
    When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with growing interest
at the new schoolfellow, although he was
