Act I - Page 2

Maggie shudders to see him receiving company.

The other chairs are horse-hair, than which nothing is more
comfortable if there be a good slit down the seat. The seats are
heavily dented, because all the Wylie family sit down with a dump.
The draught-board is on the edge of a large centre table, which also
displays four books placed at equal distances from each other, one of
them a Bible, and another the family album. If these were the only
books they would not justify Maggie in calling this chamber the
library, her dogged name for it; while David and James call it the
west-room and Alick calls it 'the room,' which is to him the natural
name for any apartment without a bed in it. There is a bookcase of
pitch pine, which contains six hundred books, with glass doors to
prevent your getting at them.

No one does try to get at the books, for the Wylies are not a reading
family. They like you to gasp when you see so much literature
gathered together in one prison-house, but they gasp themselves at
the thought that there are persons, chiefly clergymen, who, having
finished one book, coolly begin another. Nevertheless it was not all
vainglory that made David buy this library: it was rather a mighty
respect for education, as something that he has missed. This same
feeling makes him take in the Contemporary Review and stand up to it
like a man. Alick, who also has a respect for education, tries to
read the Contemporary, but becomes dispirited, and may be heard
muttering over its pages, 'No, no use, no use, no,' and sometimes
even 'Oh hell.' James has no respect for education; and Maggie is at
present of an open mind.

They are Wylie and Sons of the local granite quarry, in which Alick
was throughout his working days a mason. It is David who has raised
them to this position; he climbed up himself step by step (and hewed
the steps), and drew the others up after him. 'Wylie Brothers,' Alick
would have had the firm called, but David said No, and James said No,
and Maggie said No; first honour must be to their father; and Alick
now likes it on the whole, though he often sighs at having to shave
every day; and on some snell mornings he still creeps from his couch
at four and even at two (thinking that his mallet and chisel are
calling him), and begins to pull on his trousers, until the grandeur
of them reminds him that he can go to bed again. Sometimes he cries a
little, because there is no more work for him to do for ever and
ever; and then Maggie gives him a spade (without telling David) or
David gives him the logs to saw (without telling Maggie).

We have given James a longer time to make his move than our kind
friends in front will give him, but in the meantime something has
been happening.