I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.
Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby's too.

Besides that Mr.
Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there.

That I suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I.How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to tell.

But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work.
I knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt.

I soon became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other boys.