“Since I landed in Canada I have had many false notions rudely torn away, and one of them is, that there is any connection between worth and station in life. I have found more to admire in the shanty than I ever did in the parlors of the Old Country.”
“That’s repeatin’ what Rabbie Burns wrote, the rank is but the guinea stamp.”
“I have proved it true: for the first time in my life I have become intimate with those whose living depends upon the labor of their hands, and my Old World notions have melted away, when I found them better than those whose boast it is they never soiled their fingers with manual toil.”
“Aye, aye; nae guid comes o’ tryin’ to escape the first command to fallen man, ‘in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’”
“What say you?” asked Morton.
“To your asking Maggie? Oh, dinna speak o’t. She’s my ae ewe lamb and I canna pairt wi’ her.”
“I do not mean you should; we would go to Upper Canada together.”
The old man paused and leant upon his hoe and Morton stood respectfully behind him. After long silence he raised his head. “I canna answer you. It’s no for me to put my ain selfish will against her good; gang and let her choose for hersel’.”
“Thank you,” said Morton with emotion.
“We have had a backward spring; frost every week a maist to the middle o’ June, an’ sic cauld winds since syne that naething grows. We hae sown in hope, but I’m fearfu’ there will be little to reap. Sic a spring the auldest settler canna mind o’. Look at thae tatties! What poor spindly things they are, an’ this the first week o’ July.”