Cleg Kelly was certainly acquiring, by contact if in no other way, certain Christian ideas. For the rest he was still frankly pagan.
Now at this particular date Hunker Court Sabbath school was run under a misapprehension. It was the idea of the superintendent that a little sugared advice would tame the young savages of the courts and wynds. Hence the hour of instruction was largely taken up with confused sound and fury. Samson would have been wiser if he had suborned a prize-fighter of good moral principles to teach the young idea of Hunker Court how to shoot head foremost out at the door. Under these circumstances it is conceivable that some good might have been done. But as it was, under the placid consulship of Samson Langpenny, teachers and scholars alike had a good deal of physical exercise of an interesting and healthful sort. But the moral and religious improvement was certainly to seek.
Yet in the class of Miss Semple, that excellent woman and good teacher of youth, there was one scholar who that Sunday had heard to profit. It was Cleg Kelly. He carried home little Chris Cullen on his shoulders, and if no angel stirred the waters of the gutter puddles as these two went their way, and if no immediate healing resulted, both Chris and Cleg were the better for the lesson of the troubling of the waters.
Even Samson Langpenny did not go to Hunker Court that day in vain, for he went along with Chris and Cleg part of the way home. Pride was not among Samson's failings, and, as we know, bashfulness was equally absent from the black catalogue of the sins of our hero.
"What for are you carrying Chris?" asked Samson Langpenny, who, though he had many weaknesses, had also large and sufficient virtues of earnestness and self-sacrifice.
"Weel, ye see, sir," said Cleg, trotting alongside cheerily, his burden upon his shoulders, "it's true that Chris can gang himsel'. But ye ken yersel' gin the laddies are verra ceevil when they get oot o' schule. They micht knock the wee yin ower. But when he is up on my shoothers, they juist darena. My certes, but I wad like to fa' acquaint wi' the yin that wad as muckle as lift a 'paver' to him. I wad 'paver' him!"
The superintendent smiled, though as a general rule he deprecated an appeal to arms. Cleg had also a little sound advice to offer his superior.
"Ye dinna lick aneuch in your schule, Maister!" continued Cleg, for he was unselfishly desirous that everyone should succeed in the sphere of life to which Providence had called him. He did not, it is true, see any great reason for a man's having taken to keeping Sunday school. Summer treats in the country might surely have been given without them—likewise tea soirées. But since these things had been mixed up together, the instruction part, however unnecessary, should certainly be carried out in a workmanlike fashion.
"Not lick enough?" queried the superintendent, aghast. He thought he could not have heard aright—the pest of Hunker Court counselling corporal punishment!