"Roland, I told you to go to bed. Did you hear me? Put your things away at once."
He lifted his big brown eyes with rebellion showing in them for the first time in his life.
"Auntie doesn't mind whether I go to bed when she tells me to or not."
"Oh, doesn't she? I see it was time I had you brought over here. You will put your things away instantly and go to bed."
Clearly he knew the something in my voice which told him that obedience would be enforced at once and to the uttermost. And he rose and went.
And yet people have always accused me of spoiling him!
"You see, Little Yeogh Wough," I explained to him in one of our good-night talks more than a week later. "I want you to grow up to be a real man, and not a sham one. That is why you must obey. Suppose, when you grow up, you became a soldier—an officer—and you were ordered to take your men to a certain spot on a battlefield by a certain time, and you said to yourself in a slouchy way that a minute late in starting or arriving wouldn't matter. Well, then, do you know what would happen? Things would go wrong in that battle, and very likely your men would be shot down by the guns of your own people; because, you see, the order would have been given to fire just when you were due to have cleared out of a certain place—and if you haven't cleared out you yourself are to blame for any mischief that is done. And it's the same in life. There's a plan in everything, if you look for it, and if we are disobedient and don't keep time, we put that plan all wrong."
But that first night I did not have a good-night talk with him at all. He did not ask me to come and see him in bed, though before I left home he had been heartbroken at the prospect of my nightly talks with him being interrupted. For a further and shocking proof of his new naughtiness had come to light.
Miss Torry, searching in the pockets of his inelegant and despised overcoat, had pulled forth something which drew from her a louder "Lor'!" than ever I had heard her utter before. She held the something up and revealed a long thick tress of coppery brown hair.