Cheeses went from Marlow's store loft, and never a pig trough was safe from him.

Some farmer walking over his field of swedes would find the great spoor of his feet and the evidence of his nibbling hunger--a root picked here, a root picked there, and the holes, with childish cunning, heavily erased.

He ate a swede as one devours a radish.

He would stand and eat apples from a tree, if no one was about, as normal children eat blackberries from a bush.

In one way at any rate this shortness of provisions was good for the peace of Cheasing Eyebright--for many years he ate up every grain very nearly of the Food of the Gods that was given him....
Indisputably the child was troublesome and out of place, "He was always about," the Vicar used to say.