p rabbits?"

"Aye."

"What kind?"

"Twa Himalayas and a half Patty."

"Keep doos?"

"No."

It was like drawing blood from a milestone.

"What do you do when you go home at nights?"

It was a long difficult task to get anything out of him. The only fact
of value I got was that he was a great reader of Wild West stories. I
asked him to come to me again, and he said he would.

To-night I asked Mac about him.

"He's a dreamer," said Mac, "and he's lazy. I am always strapping him
for inattention. He's not a manly boy, never plays games, always stands
in a corner of the playground."

"Does he ever fight?" I asked.

"He's a great coward, but there's one queer thing about him; when any boy
challenges him to fight he goes white about the gills but he always
fights . . . and gets licked."

"Mac," I said, "will you do me a favour? Don't whack him again; it is
the worst treatment you can give him. He is a poor wee chap, and he is
badly in need of real help."

"All right," said the kindly Mac, "I'll try not to touch him, but he
irritates me many a time."

* * * * *

I had Geordie for an hour this morning. He was taciturn at first, but
later he talked freely. He is very much afraid of his father, and he
weeps when his father scolds him. This makes the father angrier and he
calls Geordie a lassie, a greetin' lassie. This jeer wounds the boy
deeply. He is afraid in the dark. He told me that he was puzzled about
one thing; when he goes for his milk at night he is never afraid on the
outward journey, but when he leaves the dairy to come home he is always
in terror. I asked him what he was afraid of and he told me that he
always imagined that there was a man in a cheese-cutter cap waiting to
murder him.

"What is a cheese-cutter?" I asked.

"It is a bonnet with a big snout, something like a railway porter's. My
father's a porter and he has ane."

Evidently the man he is afraid of is his father. This may account for
his lack of fear when he is walking from his home to the dairy. Then he
is leaving his father; when he starts to return he is going back to his
father and is afraid.

I asked him about his fights with other boys. He always feared a fight
but he went through with it so that the other boys should not call him a
coward. Naturally he always lost the battle; he fought with a divided
mind; while his less imaginative opponent thought only of hitting and
winning,