Saturday the Fourth
This tearing up of roots is a much sorrier business than I had imagined. And more difficult. I find it hard to know what to take and what to leave behind. And there is so much to be thought of, so much to be arranged for, so much to be done. I have had to write Duncan and tell him I’ll be a few days later than I intended. My biggest problem has been with Whinstane Sandy and Struthers. I called them in and had a talk with them and told them I wanted them to keep Casa Grande going the same as ever. Then I made myself into the god from the machine by calmly announcing the only way things could be arranged would be for the two of them to get married.
Struthers, at this suggestion, promptly became as coy as a partridge-hen. Whinnie, of course, remained Scottish and canny. He became more shrewdly magnanimous, however, after we’d had a bit of talk by ourselves. “Weel, I’ll tak’ the woman, rather than see her frettin’ hersel’ to death!” he finally conceded, 281 knowing only too well he’d nest warm and live well for the rest of his days. He’d been hoping, he confessed to me, that some day he’d get back to that claim of his up in the Klondike. But he wasn’t so young as he once was. And perhaps Dinkie, when he was grown to a man, could go up and look after his rights. ’Twould be a grand journey, he averred with a sigh, for a high-spirited lad turned twenty.
“I’ll be stayin’ with Pee-Wee and the old place here,” concluded Whinstane Sandy, giving me his rough old hand as a pledge. And with tears in my eyes I lifted that faithful old hand up to my lips and kissed it. Whinnie, I knew, would die for me. But he would pass away before he’d be willing to put his loyalty and his courage and his kind-heartedness into pretty speeches. Struthers, on the other hand, has become too flighty to be of much use to me in my packing. She has plunged headlong into a riot of baking, has sent for a fresh supply of sage tea, and is secretly perusing a dog-eared volume which I have reason to know is The Marriage Guide.
Gershom, all things considered, is the most dolorous member of our home circle. He says little, but inspects me with the wounded eyes of a neglected spaniel. He will stay on at Casa Grande until the 282 Easter holidays, and then migrate to the Teetzels’. As for Dinkie and Poppsy, they are too young to understand. The thought of change excites them, but they have no idea of what they are leaving behind.
Last night, when I was dog-tired after my long day’s work, I remembered about Dinkie’s school-essays and took them out to read. And having done so, I realized there was something sacred about them. They gave me a glimpse of a groping young soul reaching up toward the light.
“We have a Flag,” I read, “to thrill our bones and be prod of and no man boy woman or girl” (and the not altogether artless diminuendo did not escape me!) “should never let it drag in the dust. It flotes at the bow of our ships and waves from the top of most post offices etc. And now we have a flag and a flag staf in front of our school and on holdays and when every grate man dies we put said flag up at haf mast.... It is the flag of the rich and the poor, the flag of our country which all of whose citizens have a right to fly, the hig” (obviously meant for high) “and the low, the rich and the poor. And we must not only keep our flag but blazen it still further with deeds nobely done. If ever you have to shed your 283 blood for your country remeber its for the nobelest flag that flies the same being an emblen of our native land to which it represens and stands in high esteem by the whole people of a country.” ... God bless his patriotic little bones! My bairn knew what he was trying to get at, but it’s plain he didn’t quite know how to get there.
But the drama of the Capture of Quebec plainly put him on easier ground. For here was a story worth the telling. And what could be more glorious than the death of Wolfe as I see it through my little Dinkie’s eyes?