PART II.
CHAPTER XVII.
I TURN SCHOOLMASTER.
There were many things to be doing in these days—peats to be cutting and carted home and built into tidy stacks, just as you can see them to-day, and the sprits and bog hay to be saving, for we were not good at growing hay, and then, when the boys grew up, there was the schooling of them. It was the boys we would aye be calling them, Dan's boy and the Laird's son, and they were fine boys.
Bryde McBride, that was the name of Dan's son, and Hugh, with a wheen other names, was the young Laird, who was schooled in Edinburgh and was not long back to us, and there was a lass Margaret, his sister. They would be with me everywhere on the long summer days, and me with the books by me; but mostly in the summer we would hold school at the Wee Hill, for there was a green place as level as the page of a book, and a little turf dyke enclosing it nearly, that we called the Wee Hill. Wae's me, now they have hens scarting about the place, and the greenness is gone from it.
There was the stone of twenty-two snails close by, for that was the number we found on it, a thing I have many times thought about; and great games we had, Bryde with his black hair and swarthy skin and wild blue eyes, with laughter just ready in them, and the speed and grace of a wild cat; and Hugh, ruddy like his folks, and dour too and very loyal; and the lass Margaret, who could turn Bryde with her little finger, and gloried in the doing of it. Ay, they grew up with me, and would be swimming with me in the sea, and every path in the hills we would be riding over, and we were happy together. These were the happiest hours of all, ochone; the sun shone more brightly and the days were longer.
And in his mother's eyes there was none like Bryde. The sun rose and set on him, his every little mannerism was a joy, and I have watched her gazing at him for long without speech, and suddenly rise and press his head against her heart, and her happiness was when he looked up from his task and smiled. I think never was a hand laid on him in anger.
There was something elemental about the lad. He would stand mother naked in the dim morning light below the little fall, and his pony awaiting him, and he kent every horse and dog within twenty miles. Indeed, there was a time when he would have slept with his horses.
"They might be needing me in the night," said he.
In these days we grew hay in a droll fashion. If there was a field namely for good grass, we would be getting green divots from it and putting them in our own parks, and scattering good rich earth round the divots. And when the grass was blown about by the winds, the seeds would fall and strike on the loose scattered earth, so that these divots were the leaven that leavened the whole field. But when he was sixteen and man grown, a fair scholar and expert with the sword, Bryde would be laughing at the notion. And he was strong and tough like the mountain ash.