"Hamish!" he whispered, "Hamish, will that be an—English name?"
"Eh? What name?" Hamish awoke reluctantly to the troublesome realities. "I'll not know."
"Aw, tell me, Hamish!"
"My, but you will be a bother! Yes, Herbert will be an English name, but Isabel Douglas is Scotch, an' a fine Hielan' name, too. But what in the world would you be wanting to know for?"
Scotty hesitated. He hung his black, curly head, and swung his feet in embarrassment; but finally he looked up desperately.
"Do you know what made Danny Murphy say I was an Englishman?" he whispered.
Hamish stifled a laugh. "It would likely jist be his natural Irish villainy," he suggested solemnly.
But Scotty shook his head at even such a natural explanation. "No, it would not be that, it would be—because—the master said it, Hamish!"
"The master?" Hamish's look of amusement changed to one of deep interest. "Why? What would he be saying?"
The boy glanced around the room apprehensively, but the rest of the family were still absorbed in Weaver Jimmie. "When we would be coming into the school," he whispered hurriedly, "the master would be calling all the new ones to the front. An' he says to me, 'What's your name, child?' An I says, 'It's Scotty,—Scotty MacDonald.' An' he says, 'Hut tut, another MacDonald! Yon's no name. Whose bairn are ye?' An' I told him I belonged to Grandaddy an' the boys; an' he says,—an' he says, 'Oh tuts, I know you now. You're Big Malcolm's English grandson!' He would be saying that, Hamish! An' he wrote a name for me; see!" He had been growing more and more excited as the recital proceeded, and at this point he jerked from his bosom a torn and battered primer that had done duty in the few days that Hamish had attended school. Under the scrawling marks that stood for Hamish's name was written in a fine scholarly flourish, "Ralph Everett Stanwell."