Chapter 13 - Page 2

and a
saucepan, which were all his belongings, he wandered from manse to manse
offering to write sermons for the ministers at circus prices. That
scheme failing, he was next seen looking in at windows in search of a
canny calling, and eventually he cut one of his braces into a pair of
tawse, thus with a single stroke of the knife, making himself a
school-master and lop-sided for life. His fee was but a penny a week,
"with a bit o' the swine when your father kills," and sometimes there
were so many pupils on a form that they could only rise as one. During
the first half of the scholastic day Ballingall's shouts and pounces
were for parents to listen to, but after his dinner of crowdy, which is
raw meal and hot water, served in a cogie, or wooden bowl, languor
overcame him and he would sleep, having first given out a sum in
arithmetic and announced:

"The one as finds out the answer first, I'll give him his licks."

Last comes the Hanky School, which was for the genteel and for the
common who contemplated soaring. You were not admitted to it in
corduroys or bare-footed, nor did you pay weekly; no, your father called
four times a year with the money in an envelope. He was shown into the
blue-and-white room, and there, after business had been transacted, very
nervously on Miss Ailie's part, she offered him his choice between
ginger wine and what she falteringly called wh-wh-whiskey. He partook in
the polite national manner, which is thus:

"You will take something, Mr. Cortachy?"

"No, I thank you, ma'am."

"A little ginger wine?"

"It agrees ill with me."

"Then a little wh-wh-whiskey?"

"You are ower kind."

"Then may I?"

"I am not heeding."

"Perhaps, though, you don't take?"

"I can take it or want it."

"Is that enough?"

"It will do perfectly."

"Shall I fill it up?"

"As you please, ma'am."

Miss Ailie's relationship to the magerful man may be remembered; she
shuddered to think of it herself, for in middle-age she retained the
mind of a young girl, but when duty seemed to call, this school-mistress
could be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of
charge. Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not
want Tommy, because she had seen him in the square one day, and there
was a leer on his face that reminded her of his father.

Another woman was less particular. This was Mrs. Crabb, of the Tappit
Hen, the Esther Auld whom Jean Myles's letters had so frequently sent
to bed. Her Francie was still a pupil