"I am hopelessly entangled in all these MacDonalds," said the new master, in a tone one man would use in addressing another. "Here are four Betseys and six Johnnies, and Donalds without number. Would you be so good as to assist me?"
Scotty's inbred Highland courtesy and the generous desire to help which was part of his nature, impelled him to answer politely. Striving to ignore the violent pantomime being enacted by Dan in the porch, he gave the man the key to the situation. His big finger ran awkwardly down the page as he gave the name by which each pupil was known. The stranger listened in some amusement and not a little bewilderment to the list: Roarin' Sandy's Donald, Crooked Duncan's Donald, Peter Archie Red's Donald. They were rather unwieldy, but he planted them down heroically, and then proceeded to disentangle the Murphys and the Tuckers after the same fashion.
"I am very much obliged to you," he said with the same quiet seriousness when the work was finished, and Scotty took his seat wondering if the new master ever smiled. Most likely that grave, unbending manner was just the natural outcome of his inevitably stuck-up nature, he reflected.
Affairs went harmoniously enough until school was dismissed for the noon recess. As soon as the word was given dinner-pails were seized, bread-and-butter, meat, pie, and cake began to appear and disappear again with equal rapidity; a crowd of the bigger girls made preparations for brewing tea on the stove; and before the new master could get on his overcoat and gloves preparatory to leaving, dinner was well under way, and the room was filled with a strong aroma of tea and pork.
Scotty had gone to the door to administer a farewell snowball to the unclassified aliens who went home to the village for dinner. A prompt answer came hurtling back, and as he dodged into the porch with a derisive yell of laughter, he barely escaped knocking over the new master. He hastily stepped aside to let him pass, but the man paused.
"I forgot to ask you your own name, among all the others," he said, more for the sake of engaging the youth in conversation than to gain information. "You are a MacDonald, too, I believe?"
Scotty had long passed the time when he felt his English name a disgrace. Of course he would have preferred one of another sort, but he scarcely thought of it now, and most of his schoolmates had forgotten that he possessed one. And, in the face of this grave man's courtesy, he felt it would be childish to pretend, so he answered, not without some dignity, "No, my name will not be MacDonald, it will be Stanwell, Ralph Stanwell."
The new master's grey eyes grew suddenly narrow; he was well acquainted with all the small tricks to be played upon a newcomer, and had many a time seen this one of a fictitious name successfully practiced. He had been prepared to find this boy hard to manage, but he was disgusted that he should descend to such a small, childish prank. He knew Scotty's name only too well, and, in any case, for a youth with a marked Highland accent, dressed in the grey homespun which seemed the uniform of the clan MacDonald, to stand before him and give himself such a name as this was as stupid as it was insulting.
"That is a very clumsy lie," he remarked quietly.
Scotty dropped his snowball and stared; for a moment he did not quite comprehend.