The snows of seventy winters powder his hair and beard. His spectacles are often pushed back on his kindly brow, but no glass could wholly obscure the clear integrity and steadfast purity of his eyes; and as for his smile, I have not the art to paint that! It holds in solution so many sweet though humble virtues of patience, temperance, self-denial, honest endeavour, that my brush falters in the attempt to fix the radiant whole upon the canvas. Fashions come and go, modern improvements transform the arts and trades, manual skill gives way to the cunning of the machine, but old David Robb, after more than fifty years of toil, still sits at his hand-loom and weaves his winceys for the Pettybaw bairnies.
David has small book-learning, so he tells me; and indeed he had need to tell me, for I should never have discovered it myself,—one misses it so little when the larger things are all present!
A certain summer visitor in Pettybaw (a compatriot of ours, by the way) bought a quantity of David’s orange-coloured wincey, and finding that it wore like iron, wished to order more. She used the word ‘reproduce’ in her telegram, as there was one pattern and one colour she specially liked. Perhaps the context was not illuminating, but at any rate the word ‘reproduce’ was not in David’s vocabulary, and putting back his spectacles he told me his difficulty in deciphering the exact meaning of his fine-lady patron. He called at the Free Kirk manse,—the meenister was no’ at hame; then to the library,—it was closed; then to the Estaiblished manse,—the meenister was awa’. At last he obtained a glance at the schoolmaster’s dictionary, and turning to ‘reproduce’ found that it meant ‘nought but mak’ ower again’;—and with an amused smile at the bedevilments of language he turned once more to his loom and I to my canvas.
Notwithstanding his unfamiliarity with ‘langnebbit’ words, David has absorbed a deal of wisdom in his quiet life; though so far as I can see, his only books have been the green tree outside his window, a glimpse of the distant ocean, and the toil of his hands.
But I sometimes question if as many scholars are not made as marred in this wise, for—to the seeing eye—the waving leaf and the far sea, the daily task, one’s own heart-beats, and one’s neighbour’s,—these teach us in good time to interpret Nature’s secrets, and man’s, and God’s as well.
Chapter XX. A Fifeshire tea-party.
‘The knights they harpit in their bow’r,
The ladyes sew’d and sang;
The mirth that was in that chamber
Through all the place it rang.’
Rose the Red and White Lily.
Tea at Rowardennan Castle is an impressive and a delightful function. It is served by a ministerial-looking butler and a just-ready-to-be-ordained footman. They both look as if they had been nourished on the Thirty-Nine Articles, but they know their business as well as if they had been trained in heathen lands,—which is saying a good deal, for everybody knows that heathen servants wait upon one with idolatrous solicitude. However, from the quality of the cheering beverage itself down to the thickness of the cream, the thinness of the china, the crispness of the toast, and the plummyness of the cake, tea at Rowardennan Castle is perfect in every detail.