Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/39

 Sadi professed a love for children and she was not unkind to them, but it cannot be said that she understood them. She was apparently delighted when fate placed Harold in her hands. After he had learned to speak she lavished affection on him in her own way. She talked to him, as she imagined children should be talked to, very deliberately, and in words of one syllable, when she could think of them, but solemnly, and often in the third person. Good little boys, etc. Bad little boys, etc. Bad little boys, it seemed, played with neighbouring farmers' sons. Good little boys stayed at home. Sadi never kept a watch-dog: her mere appearance would have frightened a tramp away, but there were pigs and chickens, and Harold was permitted occasionally to visit the pens and scratch the old sow's back with a corn-cob or a stick. Sadi kept a hired man to look after the live stock, but he was never allowed to come into the house—his meals were all delivered to him in the barn where he lived—and Harold was instructed never to talk with him. This and similar prohibitions might have infuriated another boy, might have stimulated a taste for secret disobedience, but in the make-up of Harold's character there was no curiosity, and little initiative. Further, he was conspicuously lacking in imagination. He was proud, and like most unimaginative people, could be disagreeably obstinate. Auntie Persia, as he called her, was his favourite companion. She told him stories which