Rodney's eldest sister was taken ill and the father drove the gipsy wagon to the door of the doctor's house. The doctor climbed the steps of the wagon, leaned over the door and called the sick child to him. "Your daughter has small-pox," he said to Rodney's father. "You must get out of the town at once." The sorrow-stricken man drove his wagon about two miles out of the town to a place called Morton Lane. There he erected a tent and then drove the wagon farther down the lane with the sick child in it. He remained in the wagon with the child while the mother and the other four children lived in the tent. Soon one of the boys was taken ill and he also was removed to the wagon. Those were hard days for Rodney's mother. She would prepare the food for her sick children, then carry it half-way from the tent to the wagon, then give some signal and the father would come for it. In her anxiety the poor mother seemed to approach a little nearer to the wagon each day. One day she came too near. She too, was taken ill, and when the doctor saw her, he said it was smallpox. For several days the man watched tenderly over his wife and cared for her, but it was of no avail; she gradually sank. Rodney was walking in the lane with his sister Tilly, when his eldest sister called him. "Rodney," she said, "mother's dead." The little gipsy lad fell on his face as though he had been shot. Rodney's mother was only a poor gipsy woman without any education, but she was mother, and the little fellow knew that without her life would be much harder. After his mother's death Rodney continued to help his father by selling the homemade clothespegs and tinware. He was very proud of the amount of business he could do. Some days he sold nearly nine hundred pegs. He was a bright-eyed little fellow, not at all bashful, and he became a favourite in the towns which the gipsies visited. When women did not wish to buy or seemed to hesitate, he would say: "Come, now, Madam, here you have the best pegs on the market. They will not eat and will not wear clothes out. They will not cry nor wake you up in the middle of the night." If they still hesitated, Rodney would tell them that he had no mother. It was no wonder that with his humour and determination he generally managed to do a good business. When Rodney was in his early teens his father became a Christian. It made a great change for the better in Cornelius Smith and life in that gipsy wagon became happier. The father was tremendously in earnest. He gave up his habits of drinking, stealing and swearing, and wherever the wagon went he sought some place of worship where he and his family might learn more about God. The change in Cornelius Smith soon impressed the children and Rodney decided to do as his father had done, and committed himself in simple trust to God.