Rowland was at once placed in the school, and thus at the age of seven his formal education began. His health still continued weak, and his studies were too often broken in upon by illness. He was fortunate enough, however, to find at his new home, in an outbuilding, a workshop, fitted with benches, a vice, and a blacksmith’s forge. “Here,” he said, “we spent much of our spare time, and most of our spare cash, which latter, however, was but very scanty.” The want of pence, indeed, often troubled him full sore. “Ever since I can remember,” as he wrote in a Journal which he began to keep in his eighteenth year, “I have had a taste for mechanics.... In works of the fingers I chiefly excel.” But the best mechanician wants materials, and materials cost money. One Good Friday morning he and his brother Matthew turned dealers. They had been sent with a basket to buy hot cross buns for the household. As they went along, the street-vendors were calling out, after the Birmingham fashion— “Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns! Sugar ’em, and butter ’em, and clap ’em in your muns.” The two lads, as they came home, began in jest to repeat the cry. Matthew was an admirable mimic, and had caught it exactly. To their surprise they found themselves beset with purchasers. “Not having face enough to reject demands which we had provoked, perhaps not unwilling to carry on the jest, we soon emptied our basket, and had to return for more, deeming ourselves, however, well recompensed for the additional trouble by the profits arising from the difference between the wholesale price, at which we had been allowed to purchase, and the retail price at which we had sold.” The elder of these two lads the town, as years went on, received as its Recorder; to the younger it raised a statue in his life-time. This was not the first time that Rowland had turned dealer. Not long after his family had moved to Hill Top his mother gave him a little plot of land for his garden. It was covered with a crop of hoarhound. This he was going to clear away to make room for his flowers, but he was told that it had a money value. “I cut it properly, tied it up in bundles, and, borrowing a basket of my mother, set off one morning on a market-day—Thursday, as I remember—with my younger brother Arthur as my sole companion, for the market-place of the town; and, taking my stand like any other caterer, soon disposed of my wares, receiving eightpence in return. Fortunately I was saved the tediousness of retail dealing, the contents of my basket being purchased in the gross by a woman who had taken her stand near, and who, I hope, cleared a hundred per cent. by the transaction, though she disparaged her bargain by warning me to tell my mother, ‘She must tie up bigger bunches next time.’”