July 3rd.
"JOHN MARCHBANKS."
Now, Mr. Marchbanks is not my own minister, but there is not a better respected man in the countryside, nor one whom I would less allow any one belonging to me to make light of. So it behoved me to make inquiry. Of the letter itself I could make neither head nor tail; but two things were clear—that that loon of a boy, my son Alec, was in it, and also that his mother was "accessory after the fact," as the Kirkcudbright lawyers say. In the latter case it was necessary to act with circumspection. In the other case I should probably have acted instantly with a suitable hazel rod.
I went into the house. "Where's Alec?" I asked, maybe a kenning sharper than ordinary.
"What may ye be wantin' wi' Alec?" said my wife, with a sting in her accent which showed that she was deep in the ploy, whatever it had been. It now came to my mind that I had not seen Alec since the day before, when I sent him out to play with the minister's son, till Maister Marchbanks had peace to give us his crack before I went out to the hill sheep.
So I mentioned to Mrs. M'Quhirr that I had a letter from the minister about the boy. "Let us hear it," says she. So I read the letter word for word.
"What does he mean by a' that screed?" she asked. "It's like a bit o' a sermon."
Now, my wife takes the general good out of a sermon, but she does not always trouble to translate pulpit language into plain talk.
"He means that there's six o' yin an' half a dizzen o' the ither," I explained, to smooth her down.
"Na, they're no' that," said Mrs. M'Quhirr; "my laddie may be steerin', I'm no' denyin'; but he's no' to be named in the same day as that misleered hound, the minister's loon!"