DAVID GRAYSON'S COLUMN
It was made up of the very simplest and commonest elements, mostly little scraps of news from my farm—the description of a calf drinking, the sound of pigeons in the hay loft. I told also about the various country odours in spring, peach leaves, strawberry leaves, and new hay, and of the curious music of the rain in the corn. I inquired what was the finest hour of the day in Hempfield, and tried to answer my own question. I put in a hundred and one inconsequential things that I love to observe and think about, and added here and there, for seasoning, a bit of common country philosophy. It was very enjoyable to do, and a number of people said they liked to read it, because I told them some of the things they often thought about, but had never been able to express.
Nort found Fergus far harder to influence than he found me. A curious change had been going on in Fergus which I did not at first understand. At times he was more garrulous than ever I had known him to be, and at times he was a very sphinx for silence. It is a curious thing how people surprise us. In our vanity we begin to think we know them to the uttermost, and then one day, possibly by accident, possibly in a moment of emotion, a little secret door springs open in the smooth panel of their visible lives, and we see within a long, long corridor with other doors and passages opening away from it in every direction—the vast secret chambers of their lives.
I had some such experience with that prickly Scotchman, Fergus MacGregor. It began one evening when I found him alone by the office fire. He was sitting smoking his impossible pipe and gazing into the glowing open draft of the corpulent stove. He did not even look around when I came in, but reaching out one foot kicked a chair over toward me. Suddenly he fetched a big sigh, and said in a tone of voice I had not before heard:
"Night is the mither o' thoughts."
He relapsed into silence again. After some moments he took his pipe out and remarked to the stove:
"Oaks fall when reeds stand."
"Fergus," I said, "you're cryptic to-night. What do you consider yourself, an oak or a reed?"
"Well, David, I'm the oak that falls, while the reed stands."
I tried to draw him out still further on this interesting point, but not another explanatory word would he say. It was the beginning, however, of a new understanding of Fergus.
A little later, that very evening, Anthy and her uncle came in for a moment on their way home from some call or entertainment, and not a minute behind them, Nort. I saw Fergus's eyes dwell a moment on Anthy and then return to his moody observation of the fire. And Anthy was well worth a second glance that evening. The sharp winter wind had touched her cheeks with an unaccustomed radiance, and had blown her hair, where the scarf did not quite protect it, wavily about her temples. She was in great spirits.
"Fergus," she cried out, "what do you mean sitting here all humped up over the fire on a wonderful night like this!"
Here Nort broke in:
"Fergus is thinking about what he will put into his issue of the Star."
"They're all my issues, so far's I can see," growled Fergus.
"But now, Fergus," persisted Nort, "if you were editing a column in the newspaper what would you put in it?"
Fergus began to liven up a little.
"Tell us, Fergus," said Anthy.
Fergus took his pipe out of his mouth and rubbed the bowl of it along his cheek, screwing up his face as though he were thinking hard. We all watched him. No one could ever tell quite where Fergus would break out.
"What is most interesting to you?" prompted Nort.
"That's easy," said Fergus, and turning in his chair he reached across to the shelf and produced his battered volume of "Tom Sawyer." This he opened gravely and began to read the passage in which Tom beguiles the other boys in the village to do his white-washing for him:
"Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life seemed to him hollow and existence but a burden."
Fergus read it with a deliciously humorous Scotch twist in the words, a twist impossible to represent in print. Occasionally he would pause and bark two or three times, his excuse for laughter. When he had reached the end of the passage, Nort said:
"I've got it! This is the very thing: let's put it in the Star. Where's a pencil and paper? Fergus MacGregor's Favourite Passage from 'Tom Sawyer.' Everybody in town knows that Fergus likes 'Tom Sawyer.'"
"Humph!" said Fergus, but it was evident that he was not a little pleased. Do what he would, he could not help liking Nort.
"I know something that represents Fergus still better," said Anthy.
Fergus looked across at her, and then began thumbing his pipe.
"What's that?" asked Nort.
"'The Twa Dogs.' Isn't that your favourite poem, Fergus?"
"Whur'll you find a better one?" asked Fergus, putting his pipe back in his mouth.
"That's Number Two," said the irrepressible Nort. "We'll put that in some other issue headed 'Fergus MacGregor's Favourite Poem.'"
