ee
bit smout of a wean, with long linty locks and docked petticoats, toddled
but and ben, with a coral gumstick tied round his waist with a bit
knitten; and now, after he had been at Dominie Threshem's for four years,
he had learned to read Barrie's Collection almost as well as the master
could do for his lugs; and was up to all manner of accounts, from simple
addition and the multiplication-table, even to vulgar fractions, and all
the lave of them.

At the yearly examination of the school-room by the Presbytery and
Maister Wiggie, he aye sat at the head of the form, and never failed
getting a clap on the head and a wheen carvies. They that are fathers
will not wonder that this made me as proud as a peacock; but when they
asked his name, and found whose son he was, then the matter seemed to
cease being a business of wonder, as nobody could suppose that an only
bairn, born to me in lawful wedlock, could be a dult. Folk's
cleverness--at least I should think so--lies in their pows; and, that
allowed, Benjie's was a gey droll one, being of the most remarkable sort
of a shape ye ever saw; but, what is more to the purpose both here and
hereafter, he was a real good-hearted callant, though as gleg as a hawk
and as sharp as a needle. Everybody that had the smallest gumption
prophesied that he would be a real clever one; nor could we grudge that
we took pains in his rearing--he having been like a sucking-turkey, or a
hot-house plant from far away, delicate in the constitution--when we saw
that the debt was likely to be paid with bank-interest, and that, by his
uncommon cleverality, the callant was to be a credit to our family.

Many and long were the debates between his fond mother and me, what trade
we would breed him up to--for the matter now became serious, Benjie being
in his thirteenth year; and, though a wee bowed in the near leg, from a
suppleness about his knee-joint, nevertheless as active as a hatter, and
fit for any calling whatsoever under the sun. One thing I had determined
in my own mind, and that was, that he should never with my will go
abroad. The gentry are no doubt philosophers enough to bring up their
bairns like sheep to the slaughter, and dispatch them as cadies to Bengal
and the Cape of Good Hope, as soon as they are grown up; when, lo and
behold! the first news they hear of them is in a letter, sealed with
black wax, telling how they died of the liver complaint, and were buried
by six blacks two hou