I must have betrayed my surprise by my voice, for the boy blushed as he answered:
‘No; I have been to Glasgow once or twice, but I have never been to the salt water.’ (The seaside is always spoken of as ‘the coast’ or ‘the salt water’ in this part of the country.) ‘I have never been beyond Muirburn, except once or twice, in my life,’ he added, as the look of discontent which I fancied I had detected in his face grew stronger.
‘May I look at your books?’ I asked, by way of changing the subject.
‘Oh yes; they’re not much to look at,’ he said with a blush.
I took them up—a Greek grammar, and a school-book containing simple passages of Greek for translation, with a vocabulary at the end of the volume.
‘Is this how you spend your leisure time?’ I asked.
‘Not always—not very often,’ answered Alec. ‘Often I am lazy and go in for Euclid and algebra—I like them far better than Greek. And sometimes,’ he added with hesitation, as if he were confessing a fault—‘sometimes I waste my time with a novel.’
‘I would not call it wasting time if you read good novels,’ said I. ‘What do you read?’
‘Only Sir Walter and old volumes of Blackwood; they are all I have got.’
‘You could not do better, in my opinion,’ said I emphatically. ‘Such books are just as necessary for your education as a Greek delectus.’