He neither preached nor lectured, and he broke out into no exclamations.

Had he done so, I should probably have been flurried and frightened away.

But he talked to me as a father to his son--or rather as a big brother to a young one--entering into all my troubles and difficulties, and even claiming a share in them himself.
It was a long time since I had had such a talk with any one, and it did me good.
An uneventful week or two followed.

We occasionally saw Mr Hawkesbury at our lodgings, for Smith could never bring himself to the point of again visiting the rectory.

Indeed, he was now so busily engaged in the evenings preparing for his coming examination that he had time for nothing, and even the education of the lively Billy temporarily devolved on me.
It was not till after a regular battle royal that that young gentleman could be brought to submit to be "larned" by any one but his own special "bloke," and even when he did yield, under threats of actual expulsion from the school, he made such a point of comparing everything I did and said with the far superior manner in which Smith did and said it, that for a time it was rather uphill work.