He complied, but
there seemed a mockery in his tone.
The girls, however, were kind-hearted by nature. Flora married and left
home. Hadrian did very much as he pleased with Matilda and Emmie, though
they had certain strictnesses. He grew up in the Pottery House and about
the Pottery premises, went to an elementary school, and was invariably
called Hadrian Rockley. He regarded Cousin Matilda and Cousin Emmie with
a certain laconic indifference, was quiet and reticent in his ways. The
girls called him sly, but that was unjust. He was merely cautious, and
without frankness. His Uncle, Ted Rockley, understood him tacitly, their
natures were somewhat akin. Hadrian and the elderly man had a real but
unemotional regard for one another.
When he was thirteen years old the boy was sent to a High School in the
County town. He did not like it. His Cousin Matilda had longed to make a
little gentleman of him, but he refused to be made. He would give a
little contemptuous curve to his lip, and take on a shy, charity-boy
grin, when refinement was thrust upon him. He played truant from the High
School, sold his books, his cap with its badge, even his very scarf and
pocket-handkerchief, to his school-fellows, and went raking off heaven
knows where with the money. So he spent two very unsatisfactory years.
When he was fifteen he announced that he wanted to leave England and go
to the Colonies.
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