“Because I know a trick worth two of that. I want my revenge. I want to astonish Sandie, and Maggie May as well.”
There is a good old saying which, I must confess, has been of much service to me during life. It is this: “You never know what you can do till you try.”
I have often felt so ill, that I thought to get out of bed and begin literary work would be a sheer impossibility. Then that bold saying has come to my mind, and I have got up, and shaved myself—a terrible ordeal when one is low and sick—and had my cold bath—another terrible ordeal, even for a Scotsman, when out of form. Then I have had breakfast and begun work, and wonderful to relate, the more I wrote the better I grew. What think you of that, reader mine?
Well, in Willie’s case there was another proof of the truth of the grand old aphorism. Willie persevered and persevered, and in six weeks’ time, long before Christmas, he had been pronounced by Bob Brown a crack shot, one who could single out his bird from a covey, and bring one down with each barrel.
“I dinna think,” said Bob frankly and honestly, “I can teach you muckle mair.”
But Willie went every night to Bob Brown’s all the same.
They had two spring-traps now, and two balls were dislodged into the air at one time, and Bob rubbed his hands with delight, and laughed to see his pupil smash each ball, making the feathers fly right and left.
. . . . . .
Sandie continued hard at his studies, especially mathematics, night after night, and made considerable progress.
What a happy day that was, though, when his mother and sister Elsie came to visit him.