"I am very content; I have a quiet home, a good father, and now I think and believe I have found the one thing I wanted--a good friend." He smiled, but only because I did.

I saw he did not understand me.

In him, as in most strong and self-contained temperaments, was a certain slowness to receive impressions, which, however, being once received, are indelible.

Though I, being in so many things his opposite, had none of this peculiarity, but felt at once quickly and keenly, yet I rather liked the contrary in him, as I think we almost always do like in another those peculiarities which are most different from our own.
Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt because the lad was slow to perceive all that he had so soon become, and all that I meant him to become, to me.

I knew from every tone of his voice, every chance expression of his honest eyes, that he was one of those characters in which we may be sure that for each feeling they express lies a countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below; a character the keystone of which was that whereon is built all liking and all love--DEPENDABLENESS.