Uncle Josiah and Aunt Sarah had shown to the passionate boy much earnest care for his body's welfare and his soul's health, but very little personal friendliness or affection; and that little, when it came from the man, he resented as impertinence, when from the woman, despised as weakness. People should play fair, and not try to catch you with shams that you didn't expect. Grown­ups had two recognised engines of warfare, and should stick to them. One was moralising, or "jaw"; the other, sheer coercion. This latter, though disagreeable, seemed to him the more logical weapon. It would have saved trouble to begin with the thing, once they were going to end with it. Indeed, the Vicar would have been surprised could he have learned how much more keenly the boy resented his sermons than his punishments. Innumerable thrashings had instilled into Jack a certain respect for a person who can hit hard; and had his relations with his uncle begun and ended with the cane, there would have been on his part far less bitterness; but the moralising filled him with scorn, and the occasional attempts at friendliness with fierce disgust.

Aunt Sarah he simply despised. She, poor woman, had certainly never been guilty of any brutality towards him; it is doubtful whether she had uttered a harsh word to any one in all her ineffectual, well-meaning days. Her ambitions went no further than to see around her smiling faces of contented serv­ants and children, looking up in happy sub­mission to their and her king; and her one grief, besides that of childlessness, was that the faces, though mostly submissive enough, were not always happy.