“Do you think we ought to teach him?” questioned Dudley.

“If he wants to learn, and you have the time, you will be letting the opportunity slip, that’s all.  And moreover old Principle isn’t going to be the one to help you do it.”

The old man turned his back upon them and walked into the pine wood again, leaving the two boys gazing after him with perturbed faces.

“He’s rather cross this afternoon,” observed Dudley.

“I s’pose he thinks it’s for our good.  Shall we try again?  Could you teach him one day, and me the next?  That wouldn’t be quite so tiring.”

Rob was called upon and consulted, and it was finally arranged that every afternoon from two to three he should have a reading lesson on the top of the garden wall.

“We shan’t feel sleepy here, and it’s the time everybody else is taking a nap,” said Roy, trying to take a cheerful view of it.  “I’m going to try and be very patient and not be cross once, for you’re our opportunity, or one of them, isn’t he, Dudley?”

Dudley nodded.  “The biggest we’ve had yet,” he said.

Rob grinned and went away delighted.  He was a steady, honest lad, devoted to both boys; but especially to Roy, who, without Dudley’s constant remonstrance, would have tyrannized over him to his heart’s content.  Miss Bertram left them alone; she exercised a certain supervision over Rob’s work, but never objected to his joining her little nephews’ amusements.

“They will not learn any harm from him,” she told her mother; “and he may teach them many things that are good.”

So it came to pass that reading lessons took place regularly every day on the top of the wall, and Rob’s eagerness to master all hard words, and his humble diffidence, when his little teachers waxed wrath with him, was touching to witness.  Sometimes conversation would bear a large part in the lessons, especially when Roy was the teacher.  And Dudley would always insist on having a break for refreshments.

“You will be able to write letters for me, Rob, when I grow up,” said Roy, one afternoon, pausing in the lesson.  “I don’t like writing letters, and I’m thinking of travelling round the world and discovering countries, so I shall have to write home sometimes.  You will come with me, won’t you?”

“For certain I will,” was the emphatic reply.

“I’ve been thinking,” pursued Roy, thoughtfully, as he let his gaze wander from the book between them to the top of the dark pines swaying gently in the summer breeze; “that I may be quite strong enough when I grow up to be a discoverer.  You see I can’t be a soldier or sailor, but I haven’t anything the matter with me but a weak chest, and doctors say sea voyages and travelling do weak chests good sometimes.  Do you think I’m a very poor body to look at, Rob?  That’s what some of the villagers say I am, but my head and legs and arms are all right.  I’m not a cripple or a hunchback, or blind, or deaf, or dumb, so I must be very glad of that.  What do you think?”