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I was often hungry and often weary; I had toothaches and earaches that I never spoke of; I was frequently so sleepy that I fell down in the boat. And I had no mother to kiss me or pity me, and the neighbors were shy and far off. Father was not cross or unkind; he just did not understand. Even in those days I wondered why God made little lads to be so miserable and to suffer so much."

Its developments were unforeseen and lasting. It was perhaps the most terrible thing he had to bear. Varden had now been a boarder for ten months. His health had broken in the previous term, partly, it is to be feared, as the result of the indifferent food and during the summer holidays he was attacked by a series of agonizing earaches.

"He," said Huldah, looking pleased at this little attention to the boy, "went to the front window and dropped a young kitten down on the old gent's head. It clawed something fierce. We had just got things going smooth again when Emmy got one of his earaches. I roasted an onion and put in his ear, and what did he do but take it out of his ear and slip it down your poor uncle's back."

He was armour-clad against germs, immune to all disease. Headaches and earaches were things unknown. "Never so much oz a boil or a pumple," as one of the old bodies told me, ever marred his healthy skin. He broke school records in scholarship and athletics, and whipped every boy of his size or years on Island McGill. It was a triumph for Margaret Henan.

No one petted or loved him; no one heeded his childish sorrows and sufferings. He had toothaches and earaches, about which he felt it useless to speak. He went into the boats with his father as soon as he could bait a line, and was forced to endure all that men endured from salt-water boils, chilblains, frost-bites, and the lashing of spray-laden winds.