Mr. Mackenzie himself, though it was not his parish, was asked to perform the ceremony, and came over on purpose to do so, after which there was a right merry and jolly breakfast, then the happy pair set out together to spend their honeymoon.
And how long, think you, did this honeymoon last? Why, just one day. They went off to see the sights in the Granite City, and next day at gloaming, they came linking down the long loanings arm-in-arm, looking as happy, quite as the yellow-billed blackbird and his wife who lived in yonder thicket of spruce.
Geordie Black, the orra man, had lit a fire in the cottage, and it was burning brightly; Elsie had laid the table, and tea and dinner combined were ready, just as the happy pair came over the threshold.
“Oh,” cried Jamie, “this is truly delichtfu’.”
The occasion even required verse, and Jamie was equal to it. As he threw himself into the easy-chair with a kind of tired but contented sigh, he carolled forth—
“Mid pleasures and palaces
Where’er we may roam,
Be it ever so humble,
There’s no place like home.”
. . . . . .
Now to return to our hero Sandie: his experiences of pupil-teaching had not been to him bliss unalloyed. It took him away from his studies, it was a loss of time, and a terrible worry, and the pay was hardly commensurate. Besides, as at the close of next session he meant to compete for a great prize for mathematics of sixty pounds, tenable for the two last sessions of the curriculum, he would really need all his time for preparation.
So in his own mind he began to cast about for some means of making a little money during the summer, to help him through the weary winter. A little would do; but that little must be earned.
He must help his father with the harvest work, free, gratis. Many and many a year and day that dear old father, whose hair was now silvered with age, had helped him.