The Mill on the Floss Book the 2nd Chapter III - The New Schoolfellow

In which Tom Tulliver returns to school on a bleak January day to find himself assigned a new companion, Philip Wakem, whose deformity and family associations provoke Tom’s uneasy curiosity and guarded imagination. Through their tentative conversation by the fireside, the boys begin to bridge the gap between prejudice and camaraderie by sharing their interests in drawing, history, and sport, revealing the tender awkwardness of friendship’s first stirrings.