An Italian grammar fell into his hands, and he learned Italian. When he was a tutor in the country, as there was no tailor there, he undertook to alter a pair of trousers. He opened the seams, altered and stitched the trousers, and ironed them with the great stable key. He also mended his boots. When he heard his sisters and brothers play in a quartette, he was never satisfied with the performance. He would have liked to jump up, to snatch the instruments from them, and to show them how they ought to play.

John had learned to speak the truth. Like all children, he lied in his defence or in answer to impertinent questions, but he found a brutal enjoyment, during a conversation, when people were trying to conceal the truth, to say exactly what all thought. At a ball, where he was very taciturn, a lady asked him if he liked dancing.

"No, not at all," he answered.

"Well, then, why do you dance?"

"Because I am obliged to."

He had stolen apples, like all boys, and that did not trouble him; he made no secret of it. It was a prescriptive right. In the school he had never done any real mischief. Once, on the last day before the close of the term, he and some other boys had broken off some clothes-pegs and torn up some old exercise-books. He was the only one seized on the occasion. It was a mere outbreak of animal spirits, and was not taken seriously.

Now, when he was passing his own character under review, he collected other people's judgments on himself, and was astonished at the diversity of opinion displayed. His father considered him hard; his step-mother, malicious; his brothers, eccentric. Every servant-maid in the house had a different opinion of him; one of them liked him, and thought that his parents treated him ill; his lady friend thought him emotional; the engineer regarded him as an amiable child, and Fritz considered him melancholy and self-willed. His aunts believed he had a good heart; his grandmother that he had character; the girl he loved idolised him; his teachers did not know what to make of him. Towards those who treated him roughly, he was rough; towards his friends, friendly.

John asked himself whether it was he that was so many-sided, or the opinions about him. Was he false? Did he behave to some differently from what he did to others? "Yes," said his step-mother. When she heard anything good about him, she always declared that he was acting a part.

Yes, but all acted parts! His step-mother was friendly towards her husband, hard towards her step-children, soft towards her own child, humble towards the landlord, imperious towards the servants, polite to the powerful, rough to the weak.

That was the "law of accommodation," of which John was as yet unaware. It was a trait in human nature, a tendency to adapt oneself—to be a lion towards enemies, and a lamb towards friends,—which rested on calculation.