I remember very clearly the morning that George came to school for the first time. He was late and prayers had already been said when his father led him through the schoolroom to the headmaster’s desk on the platform. I could see that he was frightened by the way he held on to his father’ s hand and I felt a trifle sorry for him that he needed a hand to clutch for support in what seemed to me no great ordeal. I think now that there was also in me a little envy of his fortune in having a father’s hand to clutch. The headmaster greeted George’s father warmly and it was clear that they were friends and that George would be one of the boys who would get special treatment, being the son of the head’s friend. That made me angry, I remember. What made me even more angry was that George was put straight into the second standard. This seemed a monstrous piece of favoritism.
But it did not last long. By the next morning George was among us humbler folk in the first standard; he could read very well and on this basis had been put into the class above, but the teacher soon found out that George couldn’t do sums and so, according to the rule which counted skill at sums at superior to all other skills, George had to be demoted. They put him to sit next to me. He was crying from the public shame. I wanted to comfort him but I could think of no way of doing it. He had a new pencil which for some reason would not write. I had an old cigarette tin full of pencil ends (in all my school days I never had a whole pencil) and I gave him one and showed him how to lick the tip with his tongue to make it write. We became friends from that moment and I never ceased to be proud of myself for that simple gesture. I have done nothing in my life since which has pleased me more.

When the writer first met George that morning his impression of George was that _