But I could not
help defending myself in my own mind against what I knew to be
injustice.
Jem "frank with his father"? Well he might be, when our father's
partiality met him half-way at every turn. _That_ was no fancy of mine.
I had the clearest of childish remembrances of an occasion when I wanted
to do something which our farming-man thought my father would not
approve, and how when I urged the fact that Jem had already done it with
impunity, he shook his head wiseacrely, and said, "Aye, aye, Master
Jack. But ye know they say some folks may steal a horse, when other
folks mayn't look over the hedge."
The vagueness of "some folks" and "other folks" had left the proverb
dark to my understanding when I heard it, but I remembered it till I
understood it.
I never was really jealous of Jem. He was far too good-natured and
unspoilt, and I was too fond of him. Besides which, if the mental tone
of our country lives was at rather a dull level, it was also wholesomely
unfavourable to the cultivation of morbid grievances, or the dissection
of one's own hurt feelings. If I had told anybody about me, from my dear
mother down to our farming-man, that I was misunderstood and wanted
sympathy, I should probably have been answered that many a lad of my age
was homeless and wanted boots.
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