I suppose that--other things being equal--children learn most from those who love them best, and I soon found out that I was the object of a strangely strong affection in my new teacher.

The chief cause of this I did not then know, and only learnt when death had put an end, for this life, to our happy intercourse.

But I had a child's complacent appreciation of the fact that I was a favourite, and on the strength of it I haunted the Rectory at all hours, confident of a welcome.

I turned over the Rector's books, and culled his flowers, and joined his rides, and made him tell me stories, and tyrannized over him as over a docile playfellow in a fashion that astonished many grown-up people who were awed and repelled by his reserve and eccentricities, and who never knew his character as I knew it till he could be known no more.

But I fancy that there are not a few worthy men who, shy and reserved, are only intimately known by the children whom they love.
I may say that not only did I owe much more than mere learning to Mr.
Andrewes, but that my regular lessons were a small part even of his teaching.
"It always seems to me," he said one day, when my father and I were together at the Rectory, "that there are two kinds of learning more neglected than they should be in the education of the young.