To do Stepan Trofimovitch justice, he knew how to win his pupil's heart.

The whole secret of this lay in the fact that he was a child himself.

I was not there in those days, and he continually felt the want of a real friend.

He did not hesitate to make a friend of this little creature as soon as he had grown a little older.

It somehow came to pass quite naturally that there seemed to be no discrepancy of age between them.