The Old Curiosity Shop Chapter 25

In which a kind schoolmaster offers hospitality to a weary old man and his young companion, inviting them to stay and share in the quiet comfort of his humble abode, while his attentive but restless pupils fill the schoolroom with the raucous sounds of boyhood on a sweltering summer's day. The day closes with gentle sorrow as the schoolmaster tends to his ailing favourite pupil, whose declining health casts a quiet shadow over the village and the hearts of all who hold him dear.