He Himself Had Been Taught To Read As A Small Boy, Also To Write A Letter, But He Did Not Think Himself Equal To Teach The Boy, And So For A Time They Would Have To Be Separated.

Meanwhile the boy had picked up with Cyril, a little waif in rags, the bastard child of a woman who had gone away and left him in infancy to the mercy of others.

He had been reared in the hovel of a poor gaucho on the de la Rosa land, but the poor orphan, although the dirtiest, raggedest, most mischievous little beggar in the land, was an attractive child, intelligent, full of fun, and of an adventurous spirit. Half his days were spent miles from home, wading through the vast reedy and rushy marshes in the neighbourhood, hunting for birds' nests. Little Ambrose, with no child companion at home, where his life had been made too soft for him, was exceedingly happy with his wild companion, and they were often absent together in the marshes for a whole day, to the great anxiety of the father. But he could not separate them, because he could not endure to see the misery of his boy when they were forcibly kept apart. Nor could he forbid his child from heaping gifts in food and clothes and toys or whatever he had, on his little playmate. Nor did the trouble cease when the time came now for the boy to be sent from home to learn his letters:

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