Chapter 20 - Page 2

days he decided that Tommy should get
his chance. The school-mistress had not acted selfishly, for this
decision, as she knew, meant that the boy must now be placed in the
hands of Mr. Cathro, who was a Greek and Latin scholar. She taught Latin
herself, it is true, but as cautiously as she crossed a plank bridge,
and she was never comfortable in the dominie's company, because even at
a tea-table he would refer familiarly to the ablative absolute instead
of letting sleeping dogs lie.

"But Elspeth couldna be happy if we were at different schools," Tommy
objected instantly.

"Yes, I could," said Elspeth, who had been won over by Miss Ailie; "it
will be so fine, Tommy, to see you again after I hinna seen you for
three hours."

Tommy was little known to Mr. Cathro at this time, except as the boy who
had got the better of a rival teacher in the affair of Corp, which had
delighted him greatly. "But if the sacket thinks he can play any of his
tricks on me," he told Aaron, "there is an awakening before him," and he
began the cramming of Tommy for a bursary with perfect confidence.

But before the end of the month, at the mere mention of Tommy's name,
Mr. Cathro turned red in the face, and the fingers of his laying-on hand
would clutch an imaginary pair of tawse. Already Tommy had made him
self-conscious. He peered covertly at Tommy, and Tommy caught him at it
every time, and then each quickly looked another way, and Cathro vowed
never to look again, but did it next minute, and what enraged him most
was that he knew Tommy noted his attempts at self-restraint as well as
his covert glances. All the other pupils knew that a change for the
worse had come over the dominie's temper. They saw him punish Tommy
frequently without perceptible cause, and that he was still unsatisfied
when the punishment was over. This apparently was because Tommy gave him
a look before returning to his seat. When they had been walloped they
gave Cathro a look also, but it merely meant, "Oh, that this was a dark
road and I had a divot in my hand!" while his look was unreadable, that
is unreadable to them, for the dominie understood it and writhed. What
it said was, "You think me a wonder, and therefore I forgive you."

"And sometimes he fair beats Cathro!" So Tommy's schoolmates reported at
home, and the dominie had to acknowledge its truth to Aaron. "I wish you
would give that sacket a thrashing for me," he said, half furiously, yet
with a grin on his face, one day when he and the warper chanced to meet
on the Monypenny road.

"I'll no lay a hand on bairn o' Jean Myles," Aaron replied. "Ay, and I
understood you to say