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Updated: September 5, 2025
The next contest to come off was the high jump, for which Dick had entered, along with Pender, Rockley, and four others, including Hans Mueller. What had possessed the German boy to enter was beyond finding out, for he could scarcely jump at all. Yet many, for the fun of it, told him they thought he would surely win. "Oh, you'll outjump everybody," said Sam.
They had seen Tom's followers sneezing, but thought this might come from the dampness of the ground. "Don't give in, Tom!" cried Sam, dancing around. "You've got to beat him!" "Bah! you act like a monkey," said Lew Flapp. "Rockley's fellows are bound to win." In the meantime the rope was moving rapidly backward and forward. Once Rockley and his men had Tom's team dangerously close to the line.
The old will held good, if Matilda would consent to marry Hadrian. If she refused then at the end of six months the whole property passed to Hadrian. Mr. Rockley told this to the young man, with malevolent satisfaction. He seemed to have a strange desire, quite unreasonable, for revenge upon the women who had surrounded him for so long, and served him so carefully.
Matilda went about, frail and distant, Emmie black-browed in spite of her blondness. They were all quiet, for they did not intend the mystified servant to learn anything. Mr. Rockley had very bad attacks of pain, he could not breathe. The end seemed near. They all went about quiet and stoical, all unyielding. Hadrian pondered within himself.
"I tell you, Rockley feels sore," said Sam, a little later. "Around the belt?" asked Tom with a grin. "I mean in his mind. He and Lew Flapp are having a regular quarrel over the contest. I guess Flapp lost some money." "Perhaps, if he has, it will cure him of betting," put in Dick.
Still he persisted, and triumphed. Emmie raved and wept, the secret flew abroad. But Matilda was silent and unmoved, Hadrian was quiet and satisfied, and nipped with fear also. But he held out against his fear. Mr. Rockley was very ill, but unchanged. On the third day the marriage took place.
Hadrian did very much as he pleased with Matilda and Emmie, though they had certain strictnesses. He grew up in the Pottery House and about the Pottery premises, went to an elementary school, and was invariably called Hadrian Rockley. He regarded Cousin Matilda and Cousin Emmie with a certain laconic indifference, was quiet and reticent in his ways. The girls called him sly, but that was unjust.
When the crowd turned back he had the glass turned up to his mouth and was going through the movement of swallowing. "Ugh! what ugly stuff," he said, handing the glass to one of the crowd. "Ha! he has swallowed the poison!" cried Lew Flapp, and nudged Rockley in the ribs. "That was easy, wasn't it?" he whispered. "Give him the second glass," muttered Rockley.
"All ready?" questioned George Strong, when the time had come for the contest. "All ready on this end," replied Tom, seeing to it that each of his team was in his proper position and had a proper hold on the rope. "All ready here," said Rockley, a few seconds later. "Drop!" cried the teacher, and down went the two teams like a flash, each pulling for all it knew how.
Ted Rockley, the father of the girls, had had four daughters, and no son. As his girls grew, he felt angry at finding himself always in a house-hold of women. He went off to London and adopted a boy out of a Charity Institution. Emmie was fourteen years old, and Matilda sixteen, when their father arrived home with his prodigy, the boy of six, Hadrian.
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