“Man,” said Fred, shaking his head, “I aye thought ye were a barbarian. Now I know it. If you had your way, you would raid your neighbours’ womenfolk and bring them in by the hair of their heads, trailing them two at a time. For me, I worship them like stars, standing afar off.”
“Aye,” said I, “that would be a heap of use to the next generation, and the lasses themselves would like it weel!”
But what Freddy Esquillant said about the next generation was unworthy of him, and certainly shall not sully this philosophic page. Besides, he spake in his haste.
All the same, I noticed that, if ever any of the stars came near to his earth, it would be a certain very moderately brilliant planet, bearing the name of Agnes Anne or, more scientifically, MacAlpine Minima, which would attract Master Fred’s reluctant worship.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE AVALANCHE
And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like a tickless watch, and help along the weary hours. And though the session before I had thought but little of the letters (and indeed there was nothing in them), yet this time there were none at all, which suited me far worse. For, as it seemed, the mere sight of the hand-of-write would have cheered me.
Henceforward I could only learn, as it were, by ricochet what was going on. My grandmother never set pen to paper. Her tongue to guide was trouble enough to her without setting down words on paper to rise up in judgment against her. True, my father wrote regularly to inquire if my professor had any new light on the high things of Plato, the Iberian flavour in Martial’s Epigrams, and such like subjects which were better fitted to interest a learned dominie who had lost the scholar of his choice than to comfort a young fellow who has only lost his sweetheart.