"'I'm not 'sticking up' for him, nor 'not sticking up' for him,' he said. 'All I say is, wait a bit till you see what sort of a fellow he is himself, whatever his looks are.'
"'And most assuredly they're _not_ in his favour,' replied the tall boy.
"From this Jack could not honestly dissent; Mr. Sawyer's looks were not, in a sense, in his favour. It was not so much that he was downright ugly--perhaps that would have mattered less--but he was _poor_ looking. He had no presence, no self-assertion, and his very anxiety to conciliate gave his manner a nervous indecision, in which the boys saw nothing but cause for ridicule. He did not understand his pupils, and still less did they understand him. But all the same he was a capital teacher, patient and painstaking to the last degree, clear-headed himself, and with a great power, when he forgot his nervousness in the interest of his subject, of making it clear to the apprehensions of those about him. In class it was impossible for the well-disposed of his pupils not to respect him, and in time he might have fought his way to more, but for one unfortunate circumstance--the unreasonable and unreasoning prejudice against him throughout the whole school.
"Now our boys--Jack and Carlo--Jack, followed by Carlo, perhaps I should say, for whatever Jack said Carlo thought right, wherever Jack led Carlo came after--to do them justice, I must say, did not at once give in to this unreasonable prejudice. Jack stuck to his resolution to judge Sawyer by what he found him to be on further acquaintance, not to fly into a dislike at first sight. And for some time nothing occurred to shake Jack's opinion that not improbably the new master was better than his looks. But Sawyer was shy and reserved; he liked Jack, and was in his heart grateful to him for his respectful and friendly behaviour, and for the good example he thereby set to his companions, only, unfortunately, the junior master was no hand at expressing his appreciation of such conduct. Unfortunately too, Jack's lessons were not his strong point, and Mr. Sawyer, for all his nervousness, was so rigorously, so scrupulously honest that he found it impossible to pass by without comment some or much of Jack's unsatisfactory work. And Jack, though so honest himself, was human, and _boy_-human, and it was not in boy-human nature to remain perfectly unaffected by the remarks called forth by the new master's frequent fault-finding.