"Says I to Mr. Lessing to-day when we was talking together about this eddication business, 'It's all very well sayin' as we must make the schools so fine and grand, but what I wants to know is, who's goin' to pay?" said Allison. "Them as has got the money, I s'pose."
"What did he say?" asked Tom Burney.
"'If I have my way it'll be thrown upon the rates.' But I'm not sure I'm with him there. Once let the rates run up, and we dunno where we are. Seems to me, with all his free-and-easy ways, and his living like one of us, he's a bit close-fisted—not a bit like the old major. Depend upon it, he don't want to put down his cool hundred; and that's why he talks so brisk about the rates. There's something about it as I've not got clear yet, for the rector comes along this morning, quite cheery like, and sings out as he passes, 'Comin' to the school meetin' a Friday, Allison? Room for all. I wants this school business settled.'"
"We couldn't settle it no better than it is at present, I'm thinking," interposed Macdonald gently. "To hear the rector talk a Sunday night about it were grand, that it was; and, if it's money he wants, there isn't one of us that oughtn't to help him."
"Rich fellers like you can talk about money!" retorted Allison, with withering scorn; "but for me, who makes every penny I earns, he may think hisself well off to get the five shillin's I gives him every year for those blessed schools. I'll stick to that five, neither more nor less, unless the squire gets his way; and then I won't give nothink but what I'm made to." But Allison found himself without an audience. With the mention of money the company had dispersed.
CHAPTER VI.
A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE.
"It must take it out of one dreadfully to be so terribly in earnest," said May Webster, softly stroking the pug dog that lay curled up in her lap.
"As who?" asked her mother, looking up from her writing.