He had no playmates until he was nine, and by that
time he had much else to sober him. Of the ordinary pleasures of
childhood he had scant knowledge.
Rachael wondered at the invariable sunniness of his nature,--save when
he flew into a rage,--for under the buoyancy of her own had always been
a certain melancholy. Before his birth she had gone to the extremes of
happiness and grief, her normal relation to life almost forgotten. But
the sharpened nerves of the child manifested themselves in acute
sensibilities and an extraordinary precocity of intellect, never in
morbid or irritable moods. He was excitable, and had a high and
sometimes furious temper, but even his habit of study never extinguished
his gay and lively spirits. On the other hand, beneath the surface
sparkle of his mind was a British ruggedness and tenacity, and a
stubborn oneness of purpose, whatever might be the object, with which no
lighter mood interfered. All this Rachael lived long enough to discover
and find compensation in, and as she mastered the duties of her new life
she companioned the boy more and more.
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