He had been passed over! Full of the bitter consciousness of this, he went into the garden and concealed himself in an arbour. He felt himself to be the last and meanest. He did not weep, however, but was conscious of something hard and cold rising within, like a skeleton of steel. After he had passed the whole company under critical review, he found that he was the most honest, because he had not eaten a single strawberry outside; and then came the false inference—he had been passed over because he was better than the rest. The result was that he really regarded himself as such, and felt a deep satisfaction at having been overlooked.

He had also a special skill in making himself invisible, or keeping concealed so as to be passed over. One evening his father brought home a peach. Each child received a slice of the rare fruit, with the exception of John, and his otherwise just father did not notice it. He felt so proud at this new reminder of his gloomy destiny that later in the evening he boasted of it to his brothers. They did not believe him, regarding his story as improbable. The more improbable the better, he thought. He was also plagued by antipathies. One Sunday in the country a cart full of boys came to the parish clerk's. A brown-complexioned boy with a mischievous and impudent face alighted from it. John ran away at the first sight of him, and hid himself in the attic. They found him out: the parish clerk cajoled him, but he remained sitting in his corner and listened to the children playing till the brown-complexioned boy had gone away.

Neither cold baths, wild games, nor hard physical labour could harden his sensitive nerves, which at certain moments became strung up to the highest possible pitch. He had a good memory, and learned his lessons well, especially practical subjects such as geography and natural science. He liked arithmetic, but hated geometry; a science which seemed to deal with unrealities disquieted him. It was not till later, when a book of land mensuration came into his hands and he had obtained an insight into the practical value of geometry, that the subject interested him. He then measured trees and houses, the garden and its avenues, and constructed cardboard models.

He was now entering his tenth year. He was broad-shouldered, with a sunburnt complexion; his hair was fair, and hung over a sickly looking high and prominent forehead, which often formed a subject of conversation and caused his relatives to give him the nickname of "the professor." He was no more an automaton, but began to make his own observations and to draw inferences. He was approaching the time when he would be severed from his surroundings and go alone. Solitude had to take for him the place of desert-wandering, for he had not a strong enough individuality to go his own way. His sympathies for men were doomed not to be reciprocated, because their thoughts did not keep pace with his. He was destined to go about and offer his heart to the first comer; but no one would take it, because it was strange to them, and so he would retire into himself, wounded, humbled, overlooked, and passed by.