"What special brought ye over, George?" he asked.
I told him of Rita's anxiety to be able to talk English properly and of my willingness to teach her if it could be arranged conveniently. The minister backed up the project with all his ministerial fluency, but Andrew Clark was not the man to agree to a thing immediately, no matter how well it appealed to him.
"Rita's a good lassie," he said, "and she hasna had schoolin' except what Marget and me taught her, and that's little more than being able to read and add up a few lines o' figures.
"George Bremner,—you're an honest man and I like ye fine. You'll ha'e my answer by the end o' the week."
"Right you are!" I exclaimed.
Andrew then started in to tell Mr. Auld of the method he had adopted in regard to the disposition of his output of eggs, and that gave me just the opportunity I wanted.
"How do you raise your chicks, Mr. Clark?" I asked. "Do you use an incubator?"
"Sure thing! And a grand little incubator I ha'e too," he answered. "She takes two hundred and fifty eggs at a time and gives an average of eighty per cent chicks."
I had lit on Andrew Clark's one and only hobby.
He got up. "Come and ha'e a look at it. It's called 'The Every-Egg-A-Chick' Incubator, and it nearly lives up to its name.