"Had you not the time?"
"Yes."
"Then why did you not do as you were wished?"
Tam hung his head in shame.
"Tam Jamison, listen to me. I will have those in my employ attend to my wishes, and attend to them with all their might. Do you wish to be ignorant all your life, when the time and the means for improvement are placed at your command? In three months' time I shall expect you to read and write in such a way that you will be able to fulfil in a creditable manner a simple duty like that you have to-day so grievously failed in. Now we'll go on."
Tam Jamison wanted no more speaking to. He was now thoroughly awake: and he went to work with all his might to do the behest of his mistress and Sovereign, and, in truth, he made prodigious progress; so that when it happened one day—he being then in attendance on her Majesty in another part of the country—that she required the names of several rare plants to be written down for her future use, he did it so cleverly that he was rewarded with a pleased smile.
Tam felt that he had acquired wings that afternoon, and the strangest part of the affair was, that when he came to reckon up precisely, he discovered that it was three months to a day since his "royal earwigging," as the Highland gentleman called it.
To that worthy man Jamison communicated his delight. "Ah," said he, "ye thocht, like many anither, that ye were doing a great service to her gracious Majesty by your few hours of daily labour; but, guid faith, she does a mighty deal mair for ye than ye, or ony the likes o' ye, can do for her. Serve 'maist onybody else in the kintra, an' they'll take yer service an' gie ye yer wage, an' there's an end. But when her Majesty teks ye intil her household she teks ye to mek a man o' ye—if it's in ye, ye ken. An' weel she knows hoo ta do it—nane better. Sae ye just go on as ye've begun, Tam Jamison, an' ye'll mebbe no bide a feckless cuddy-callant till ye're auld an' blind."
Jamison did not need to be taught his lesson a second time. He made diligent use of his opportunities, and improved so much and so visibly that when he was fifteen he was raised to the position of page. A greater mark of appreciation could hardly be given to one in the royal employ; for her Majesty's pages are amongst the most trusted of her servants.
At first the humbler duties of a page fell to his lot; but as he improved in thoughtfulness and intelligence, and in his knowledge of the manifold and delicate duties which fell to his care—in which he had the aid and instruction of one of her Majesty's oldest and most experienced pages, a man who had been in her service ever since she ascended the throne—he rose higher and higher in the royal service and the royal consideration, until at last his services were rarely required except on State and exceptional occasions only.