"Yes, in some moods," I agreed. "He is, of course, the best disciplined and most responsible boy at his school. He seems to be even better disciplined and more responsible than the all-Scotch boys, which is saying a good deal. But he has times when he needs holding in. After that day last week, for instance, you can't say that he is entirely trustworthy."
This mention of the "day last week" had to do with an unforgettable incident. The day had been a lovely one of blue sky and blue sea and high shining sun, and yet all through the long and glorious hours Little Yeogh Wough had sat in the house copying page after page out of a history book. For, thirteen years old though he was, he yet had so far forgotten himself as, in a fit of anger, to shake pepper out of a large pepper-pot over his sister's head and face at the very great risk of blinding her.
I had been doubtful at first between the respective advantages of a whipping and the writing out of these pages of history; but I decided at last on history because he was backward in this particular subject, and also because the sitting still for hours would be the greater punishment to him.
"You know, Roland, this would not have happened if I had been at home," I said to him. "Why did it happen because I was out?"
"They aggravate me," he said simply.
I knew how it had been. Old Nurse, devoted though she was, was of no use whatever for a child with a temperament, and had not perceived the psychic moment when it was necessary to send him out of the nursery. I should have felt it in my blood if I had been there, and the whole ugly affair would not have happened.
"You see the justness of your punishment, don't you, Roland?"
"You're always just, Big Yeogh Wough. I've never known you unjust yet."
So he had set himself to his pages of history, all through the long and lovely summer day.
He said once, later on, that I had never broken a promise to him, either. I had always been careful never to make one which I was not humanly sure of being able to keep. For promises broken to children are greater crimes than many that are punished at the Old Bailey.