He sent him on errands in a lordly way, treating him as, indeed, he had treated the youth of Budge Street after his triumph over Billy Goodge, and the boy obeyed meekly.

Paul believed in himself; the boy didn't.

Almost from the beginning he usurped an ascendancy over the little household.

For all their having lived in the great maelstrom of London, he found his superficial experience of life larger than that of mother and daughter.

They had never seen machinery at work, did not know the difference between an elm and a beech and had never read Sir Walter Scott.