ondole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her--were
it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but
strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was
really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at
home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to
keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from
his father.

On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that
was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag
slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie
scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now--and the
Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And
he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on
his return, never failing to note with delight the clean smell of the
yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad
nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On
Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming
arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of
his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes,
attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was
his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was
so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with
the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay
himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his
comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.

As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for
Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The
absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt
forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would
have been much more at his ease.

Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and
John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack
of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment
he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell
became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart--to feel
it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the
joiner's