Geordie's Tryst: A Tale of Scottish Life

by Janet Milne Rae

"This is Jean," he said, immediately looking up at Grace with his frank smile, as he gave his sister a little push forward.

"I have kept my tryst, ye see. You thought, maybe, I wouldna mind," he added, smiling again at the absurdity of the idea that he should forget such an eventful engagement. "I am so very glad to see you, Geordie, and Jean, too. I must say I was a little afraid that you might forget to come," added Grace, quite in a flutter of delight over the arrival of her scholars, which they little dreamt of. Then she happened to glance at Jean, who stood clutching her brother's corduroys in a very frightened attitude, and Grace remembered that this was also a new experience for the scholars, and perhaps they, too, might be suffering from the nervousness which had been following her from the lawn to the class-room for the last hour as she waited for them.

Putting out her hand to Jean, she said, in an encouraging tone, "Come, I dare say you must be tired after your walk in this hot afternoon. We shall go to a little room that my aunt has given us to sit in, and see if we cannot find something nice to read and learn," and Grace led the way up the old steps and across the hall, then through what appeared to the children quite a bewildering maze of dark passages, so dim and sombre after the bright sunshine, that Grace overheard Jean say in an, abrupt whisper, which was instantly smothered by her brother, "I'm afraid, Geordie; I'm no gain' farther upon this dark road."

At last the little company reached the room that had been assigned to them. It was the old still-room, but it had been long in disuse, and was scarcely less dim than the passages which led to it. The high narrow window only admitted a few slanting rays of sunlight, that danced on the white vaulted roof, which was queerly curved and arched by the windings of a narrow staircase above. It looked, however, none the less an imposing chamber to Geordie, who instinctively drew off his cap as he came in from the sunny glare of the fresh spring day to its semi-darkness.

Then Jean, who had decided that the best code of manners was to watch what Geordie did, and follow implicitly, began to pull the strings of her little bonnet, to remove it from her head. It had been a present from Mistress Gowrie on New Year's Day, and this was the first occasion on which Jean had worn it, though it had often been taken from its resting-place in a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, and viewed with complacency. To-day, when it came to be-tied, she had to apply to Geordie, her unfailing help in all extremities; and he in his efforts to make an imposing bow like the one which decorated Mistress Gowrie's ample chin, had knotted the strings after the manner of whipcord, so that they required all Grace's ingenuity to disentangle them.

Presently, after all these preliminaries were satisfactorily accomplished, the young teacher seated herself at the table, and began, to fumble nervously among the books which she had brought to use. There was a little story-book that Walter and she used to like long ago, in which she thought would be nice to read to them, and her mother's Bible, in which she had been searching all the morning for what might be best to choose as the first lesson, having selected and rejected a great many parables and incidents both in the New and Old Testaments, and was even now doubtful what they should begin to read.

The sight of the books reminded Geordie of his pocket compendium of knowledge, and coming to the table he laid the dog-eared "Third Primer" in Grace's hand, saying, "I've been once through, but I'm thinkin' I've maybe forgot it some. I doubt Jean doesna know one letter from another, though I've whiles tried to make her understand," added Geordie, rather ruefully, as he glanced towards the smiling little maiden, who sat quite unabashed at this account of her ignorance.

Grace was rather taken aback by the sight of the spelling-book, and also by Geordie's statement as to the amount of his knowledge, though it was the same as he had made at their first interview. Grace, however, in her eagerness, had not understood its full import, so she gasped out in some dismay, "But you can read the Bible a little, can you not, Geordie?"

"Maybe I might, if I tried," replied Geordie, in a hopeful tone. "They were just goin' to put me into the Bible when I left the school. I have heard them reading out some of the stories, and I thought they wouldn't be that difficult to spell out. Maybe if I read in the primer for a while, ye'll put me into the Bible," he added, evidently having a strong idea of the necessity for a good foundation of spelling-book lore before proceeding to use it.

But Grace thought ruefully of all her high-flown plans for this Sunday class, and felt that it was a terrible descent to be restricted to the "Third Primer." But Geordie seemed convinced that through this dog-eared volume lay the only royal road to learning. He had already opened the book at one of the little lessons near the end which he seemed to think he had not sufficiently mastered in the "schoolin' days" already far away in the distance to the little herd-boy. He still stood by Grace's side at the table, and his finger travelled slowly along the page as he read, in the nasal sing-song tone in which the reading functions were performed at the parish school, one of those meaningless little paragraphs that are supposed to be best adapted by the compilers of primers for teaching the young idea how to shoot.