I suggested that if she had been more than four years old, with five in prospect, I should have hesitated to give the invitation.
“And hoo isn’t so very strong, neether,” he added mournfully, as if to discourage my abduction of Lizzie: “doctor says as hoo had ought to ’ave a iron tunic.”
I hastily agreed, and then pondered on Lizzie, thus armour-clad, strait-waistcoated—inclusam Danaen turris aenea—ah, to be sure, “tonic,” iron tonic, much more suitable. Robert did not notice my hesitation: he had picked up a big stone, and in throwing it behind him had disturbed the peace of a tom blackbird, who fled, using language that would have brought a blush to the bill of a Melbourne cockatoo. I went on to remark that the little ones seemed very happy with Miss Jones, and that Mr. Birch was a good master.
Robert agreed: things were improved since his time, and the little ’uns would as lief go to school as stop at home, when they had once got over the scare of the first week.
“When I was a lad,” he continued; and I modify his dialect for general convenience, “at one time we had a Scotchman for schoolmaster. Squire had heard as the Scotch were great at eddication, and he advertised, and got McDougall, as they called him. But I reckon squire was a bit took in, for we soon found out as old Mac wasn’t so wise as he looked. It was in the reading lessons that we first caught him: there were some of the top lads as were pretty tidy readers, but now and again they’d come to a long word, as would pull ’em up short, same as if you’d struck your spade again a stone in digging; and they’d stop, and wait for Mac to give ’em a hand over. But they never got nowt off ’im: ’ee’d only the one answer, and that were, ‘Hop that, cocky, it’s Laa-tin’: and after a bit we got to understand, and we’d laugh, and he’d get mad. Well, one day in one of them lessons he comes to a middlin’ hard word, not so bad but what he could tell it himself: ‘Now, lads,’ he says, ‘what does this word mean?’ ‘Magazine’ it was, I remember as if it were yesterday: and Tom Jackson, he grins, and he says, ‘Please, sir, it’s Lahtin,’ and we laughed a good ’un. Eh, but Mac were wild, and he gives Tom what-for with what he called the tawse, a bit of broad leather with a hole in it, and Tom took and told his father, old Tummas, the blacksmith, of this newfangled way of thrashing a lad; and old Tummas, he goes down to skule to have it out with the gaffer. McDougall was settin’ in his own parlour with a black bottle by his side, and little Jenny Williams was keepin’ skule till he’d done his pipe and glass. ‘Hey, gaffer,’ Tummas says, when he come inside; ‘thou’st been a ’ammerin’ our Tom wi’ a strap wi’ a ’ole in it, ’stead of a stick, and ah wunna ’ave it,’ he says: ‘whoy what dost think ash-plants was growed for?’
“‘My mon,’ says Mac, ‘what are ye saying? Can ye no express yourself in a more intelligible manner?’ and he tips up the cheer as he were settin’ on, on to its hind legs, and just waves his pipe at Tummas, as if he were a kid. The smith could mak’ nowt of the Scotch, but he kicks up Mac’s foot, as he swings it in the air, and down goes skulemaster, chair and all. He clutches at the table to save hisself, like, and that brings down table and whisky bottle too; and Tummas just chucks a couple of chairs and a big cushion off the couch a-top of the whool lot, and he goes into skule. ‘’Ello, lads,’ he shouts: ‘t’ gaffer’s not a-feelin’ so very well to-dee, and it’s ’ollidee for yer all.’ And off they goes down t’ road a ’ollerin’ like mad. My word, it were a bit o’ fun.
“Well, squire got to hear of that some road, and Mac had to go: they do say as he got so drunk one day in skule that the lads had him down on the floor, and rolled him along, same as a barrel, but I wasn’t there that day: Tom Jackson tould me of it. And the squire got a college man, as had passed all the zaminations, same as Master Birch.”
“Certificated,” I suggested.
“Ah, summat o’ that: and he played th’ organ in church, and got us some new tunes, as we didn’t tak’ to, not at first, but, Lor’ bless you, they has ’em everywheer now, and calls ’em old. And he measures up fields for th’ farmers, and goos off manny a time i’ th’ arternoon to learn their daughters to play the pianner, when he should ha’ been in skule, and they should ha’ been makkin’ cheese. ‘Eh, my word,’ Farmer Turner says one day, ‘theer’s been no good cheese made i’ Cheshire since piannyfortes com’ in’: and that’s a fact.” And Robert turned over the soil pensively, and threw a worm to his favourite robin.
(“No good cheese since pianos came in.” Mrs. Poyser, or, still more, her misogynist enemy—what was his name? Bartle Massey?—would have been proud of the epigram.)