...
But the theme is Peter's education, and Dawson's is only an incident to
that history--an incident that may be taken by the percipient reader, for
a most admirable Symbol--even an early rehearsal of a Comedy entitled
"How to Learn to be a Man, or The World as a Prancing Ground."...
But with Peter, if you take him from that first asking Mrs. Trussit
(swinging his short legs from the table and diving into the mixed biscuit
tin). "Is it, Mrs. Trussit, like David Copperfield?"... to his meeting
of her again, he still rather short-legged but no longer caring over
much for mixed biscuits, in his sixteenth year, with Dawson's over and
done with--"No, Mrs. Trussit, not in the least like," and grimly said in
addition, the changes, alterations and general growing-up Development may
be said to be inside him rather than out, and there they are vital enough.
With those three and a half years it is a case of Things sticking out, like
hillocks in a flat country, and it is retrospection rather than impressions
at the time that show what mattered and what did not. But, on the whole,
the vital things at Dawson's are pretty plain to the eye and must be
squeezed into a chapter as best they can.
Treliss, as it appeared in the holidays, seemed to Peter to change very
little. His relations with his father were curiously passive during this
time, and suggested, in their hint of future developments, something
ominous and uneasy.
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