books which he had when he was a little boy?"

"Yes, dear. But go to sleep now, and I shall tell you more about Alec
some other time."

So free was the life which Rodney led, that some of the neighbours
often shook their heads, and prophesied trouble.

"If that boy Rod Royal isn't looked after more'n he is he will come to
a bad end, mark my word," Tom Dunker ponderously remarked to his wife
one evening. "He's runnin' wild, that's what he is."

"Well, what can you expect of a pauper child?" his wife replied.

"Oh, I know that, Jane. I'm not blamin' him; he can't help it. But
them who has the bringin' up of him are at fault. What do the Royals
know about the trainin' of a child? Didn't the only chick they ever
had go wild, an' him a parson's son, too? I went to school with Alec,
an' I tell ye they kept a tight rein on him. I was sure that he'd be a
parson like his dad. But, no, sirree, jist as soon as he got his
freedom, he kicked over the traces like a young colt, an' went away."

Rodney gave the neighbours numerous causes for criticism.
Unconsciously and boy-like, he did things which were often misconstrued
as downright badness, whereas the boy had not the slightest intention
of doing anything wrong. He was simply natural, while many of his
critical elders were most unnatural. They had their own hide-bound
rules of what was proper, so they found it impossible to enter into the
child's world, and look at things from his point of view.