"Aye."
"Well, you must have him properly educated for the position he is going to have." She came steadily to her point. "All your money won't be any use to him, it will only make him ashamed to go where the money could take him unless he has got the education to hold his own."
Her eyes drew his from their contemplation of the fireplace and the falling embers.
"You've the book learning, why can't you give it to him?" he said.
"I have given him as much as I can," she sighed, "but it's little enough. I'm not such a fine scholar as you think, Donald. There are things in those books that you brought from the Port—in the sale lot with the arm-chair and the fire-irons—that I cannot make head nor tail of, though the fore-bits I've read say that: 'A knowledge of the contents is essential to a liberal education.'"
She pronounced the words slowly and carefully; Donald Cameron frowned. He did not exactly know what she was driving at, but those words sounded important.
"I've been thinking," Mary went on quickly, "there's a good many people about here now, and they ought to be getting their children educated too. There's the Morrisons, Mackays, Rosses and O'Brians. And there's a child at the new shanty on the top of the track, Mrs. Ross was telling me, last time she was here. Between the lot of us we ought to be able to put up a school and get a teacher. A barn on the road would do for a school. In other parts of the country the people are getting up schools. The newspaper you brought from Port Southern last sales said that. Why should not we?"
"And where will you get y'r teacher," Cameron asked grimly.
Her colour rose.
"I know what you mean," she said. "The only sort of men who could and would think it worth while giving school to children are the convicts and ticket-of-leave men; but there are decent men among them. They seem to be doing very well in other places. I see that mothers are going to the school-room and sitting there, doing their sewing, so that they can be sure the children are learning no harm with their lessons. We could not do that every day here, but now and then one of us mothers could go to see that the school was going on well. Anyway, the children must be taught and we've got to make the best bargain we can."