We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
When Edmund was five years old Mr. Wycherly expressed his readiness to teach him all he was teaching Montagu. He took infinite pains to do so, but Edmund's presence was found to be so provocative of dispeace in the quiet study upstairs, and so effectually hindered his brother's progress, while his own was of the slowest, that Miss Esperance took the matter into her own hands and sent her younger nephew to be instructed by the Reverend Peter Gloag, who seasoned his instruction with the tawse, and was altogether more fitted to cope with the average boy's vagaries than the gentle, dreamy Mr. Wycherly. Edmund was rather afraid of the minister. His hand was heavy, and he was singularly awake to the devices by means of which small boys seek to evade their scholastic duties. Nevertheless, the child liked him, for he could unbend on occasion and was an excellent hand at marbles. Moreover, he had a sense of humour, and like so many of the Scottish Calvinists of that time, managed to keep his denunciations of abstract sins quite separate from his judgment of the sinner. In the pulpit he was a terror to evil-doers. When tackled upon questions of doctrine, he laid down the law with a vigour and determination that left his opponent with the impression that never was there such a hard and inflexible man: but when it came to deeds, when it was a question of giving another chance to a ne'er-do-weel, or the punishment to be meted out to some young ragamuffin caught stealing apples or breaking windows, the sinner had far rather fall into the hands of the minister than those of many a gentler spoken man.
In spite of the minister's endeavours, however, Edmund was still laboriously writing sentences to the effect that "'Tis education forms the mind" at an age when Montagu had begun to write Latin verses and to read Xenophon.
"I hate sitting on a chair and hearing things," Edmund would say. "I want to be doing them. I want more room than there is in Auntie's house, or the Manse. I hate things over my head 'cept the sky."
One day Miss Esperance drove both boys to Leith, and left them to play on the beach while she went to see an old friend. In a minute Edmund had off his shoes and socks, and in spite of the jagged pebbles, that hurt his unaccustomed feet so cruelly, went down to the water's edge and in up to his knees, then turning to the more timid Montagu, who still stood dubiously upon the brink, cried joyously, "This is what I've always been wanting: there's plenty of room out there."
The same evening he climbed on to Mr. Wycherly's knee demanding, "How can I get to be a sailor like my daddie was?"
"You go into the Navy."
"How do I go? What way? Where's the Navy? Is it a town?"
No, it's an institution, a service——"
"Like the poorhouse?" Edmund interrupted, in less enthusiastic tones.