For weeks he lay ill, and during that time no nurse was more devoted, and no companion more constant, than Charlie Newcome.

A friendship sprang up between the two, strangely in contrast with the old footing on which they had stood.

No longer was Tom the vain, hectoring patron, but the docile penitent, over whose spirit Charlie's character began from that time to exercise an influence which, if in the time to come it could always have worked as it did now, would have gone far to save Tom Drift from many a bitter fall and experience.
When Tom, a week before the Christmas holidays, left the sick-room and took his place once more in his class, Gus, Margetson, and Shadbolt were no longer inmates of Randlebury School..