Book 2 - Chapter 7 - Page 2

uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought
home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of
landscape, and water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript
books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all
the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he
brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through
different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature;
and that passage was not entirely without results, besides the
possession of the books. Tom's ear and tongue had become accustomed to
a great many words and phrases which are understood to be signs of an
educated condition; and though he had never really applied his mind to
any one of his lessons, the lessons had left a deposit of vague,
fragmentary, ineffectual notions. Mr. Tulliver, seeing signs of
acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism, thought it was
probably all right with Tom's education; he observed, indeed, that
there were no maps, and not enough "summing"; but he made no formal
complaint to Mr. Stelling. It was a puzzling business, this schooling;
and if he took Tom away, where could he send him with better effect?

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King's Lorton, the
years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him
returning from Mr. Jacobs's academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying
himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more
shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride;
he wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down
on his lip with eager impatience, looking every day at his virgin
razor, with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip
had already left,--at the autumn quarter,--that he might go to the
south for the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change
helped to give Tom the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually
belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter, too,
there was some hope of his father's lawsuit being decided; _that_ made
the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had
gathered his view of the case from his father's conversation, had no
doubt that Pivart would be beaten.

Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks,--a fact which did
not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest
their affection in unnecessary letters,--when, to his great surprise,
on the morning of a dark, cold day near the end of November, he was
told, soon after entering the study at nine o'clock, that his sister
was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs. Stelling who had come into the
study to tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.