And as I rolled the weighty and sounding words glibly off, Hob would listen with an air of infinite satisfaction, like one that rolls a sweet morsel under his tongue.
“Read that leaf again! It’s a grand-soundin’ ane that! Like ‘And the Lord said unto Moses’ in the Book of Exodus. Certes, what it is to have learning!”
Then very gravely I would read to the foot of the page and stop.
Hob would stand a moment to digest his meal of the Humanities.
“Lie ye there, laddie,” he would say; “gather what lear ye can out of your books. I will look to the hill sheep for you this day!”
I shall never forget his delight when, after great wrestlings, I taught him the proper cases of Penna, “a pen,” which in time he attained so great a mastery over that even in his sleep he could be heard muttering, “Penna, a pen; pennae, of a pen.” And our David, slinking sulkily in at a wolf-lope from his night-raking among the Glenkens lasses, would sometimes bid him to be silent in no kindly tones, at which the burly Hob, who could have broken slender David over his knee, would only grunt and turn him over, recommencing monotonously under his breath, “Penna, a pen!”
My father smiled at all this—but covertly, not believing, I think, that there was any outgate for me into the ministry. And with the state of things in Scotland, indeed, I myself saw none. Nevertheless, I had it in me to try. And if Mr. Linning, Mr. Boyd, Mr. Shields, Mr. Renwick and others had gotten their learning in Holland, why should not I?
In return for Penna, a pen (pennae, of a pen, et cetera), Hob taught me the use of arms, the shooting to the dot of an “i” with a gun and a pistol, the broad sword and the small sword, having no mercy on me at all, but abusing me like a sheep-stealer if I failed or grew slack at the practice.
“For,” he said, “if ever you are to be a right minister in Scotland, it is as like that ye will need to lead a charge with Richard Cameron, as that ye will spend all your time in the making of sermons and delivering them.”
So he taught me also single-stick till I was black and blue all over. He would keep on so long belabouring me that I could only stop him with some verbal quib, which as soon as it pierced his thick skull would make him laugh so long and so loudly that the lesson stopped of itself. Yet for all that he had in after time the mighty assurance to say that it was I who had no true appreciation of humour.