[The Iron Rule by T. S. Arthur]@TWC D-Link bookThe Iron Rule CHAPTER V 5/17
In truth, Andrew was a bad boy; self-willed and overbearing toward his companions; a trespasser on the rights and privileges of others; and determinedly disobedient to his father.
But for all this his father was to blame. While sternly repressing the evil in his child, he had not lovingly sought to develop the good.
While vainly striving to root out the tares which the enemy had sown, he had injured the tender wheat, whose green blades were striving to lift themselves to the sunlight. Alas! how many parents, in their strange blindness, are doing the same work for their unhappy children. Amid all the perverseness that marked the character of Andrew; amid all his hardness and wrong-doing; his attachment to Emily Winters remained as pure and earnest at sixteen, as when a child he suffered punishment rather than give up her society.
Emily, who was about his own age, had grown, by this time, into a tall, graceful girl, and was verging on toward womanhood with a rapidity that made the boy's heart tremble as he marked the distance which an earlier development of body was placing between him and the only one, except his mother, that he had ever loved. Between the families of Mr.Howland and Mr.Winters there was no intercourse.
Mr.Howland early imbibed a strong prejudice against Mr.Winters, who did not happen to be a church member, and who, on that account, was believed by Mr.Howland to be capable of doing almost any wrong action, if tempted thereto.
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