I feared that I was losing Jim and Janet and the others, but I have not lost them. They conform to Macdonald\'s reign of authority when they are in school, but they do it with their tongues in their cheeks. But only the select few have followed my banner. Jim is the only boy, and the only girls are Janet, Jean, Ellen, Annie, and Gladys. Barbara is of divided allegiance. The others are Macdonaldised. I find it a very difficult thing to define Macdonaldisation. Possibly its most distinguishing characteristic is what I might call a dour pertness. The bairns have lost their standard of values; they don\'t know limits. I pinched Mary\'s cheek when I met her this morning on her way to school, and she tossed her head in the air and looked at me with a cheeky expression which meant: "What do you think you\'re doing?" If I rag Eva she answers with brazen impudence. I have given up speaking facetiously to the boys, for they also were impudent. They were not like that when I had them; I could play with them, joke with them, rag them and they took it all with the best good humour; they teased me and played jokes on me, but they did it in the right spirit.

I have seen it again and again. Strict discipline destroys a child\'s values of good[Pg 157] taste and bad taste. Naturally when freedom is denied them they do not know what freedom means. The atrocities committed by the super-disciplined German army are quite understandable to me; like Macdonaldised bairns they did not understand the freedom they suddenly found themselves enjoying, and they converted it into licence. I can tell the character of a village dominie when I stop to ask a group of boys the way to the next village when I am cycling.

Jimmy Young slouches past me now with a stare of hostility, and it isn\'t six months ago since he came running to me on the road one night for protection from the policeman who was after him for stealing a turnip from Peter Mitchell\'s field. The policeman came up and in a loud voice accused the laddie, while at the same time he threw in a hint or two that my lax discipline had something to do with the case.

"If they got a little mair o\' the leather, things wud be different," he growled.

I do not like policemen; their little brief authority somehow manages to get my back up.

"What\'s the row?" I asked mildly.

"This young devil has been stealin\' neeps," he roared, "and Mitchell\'s gaein\' to mak a pollis court case o\'t."

I said nothing; I took Jimmy by the arm and walked towards the gate of Mitchell\'s field. I vaulted it and deliberately pulled[Pg 158] up a turnip and peeled it and ate it, while the constable stood writing down notes voluminously.

"Understand," I said to him, "that I am not primarily encouraging Jimmy to steal turnips; my one aim is to appear in the police court with him if he is charged. I would rather a thousand times be with him in the dock than with you and your farmer in the witness-box."

Peter Mitchell did not prosecute.

In these days Jimmy realised that he and I were friends; we understood each other. Now he does not think of trying to understand me; I am an ex-dominie, and that\'s enough for him. Macdonald is the real dominie; Jimmy must be circumspect when he is about else there will be ructions. I don\'t count: I have no authority. I should like to hear Macdonald\'s remarks to Jimmy if the constable came to the school to tell of one of the laddie\'s escapades.

I have lost Jimmy and a hundred others, but I thank heaven for the bairns left to me. They come up nearly every night, and they spend Saturdays and Sundays with me.

Last Saturday Macdonald came into the field where we were playing. Janet and the other girls froze at once; all the fun went out of them, and they looked at him timidly. He tried to show that he also could be playful and he tried to romp with them for a while. The romp wasn\'t a success; they were acting all the time, and when a girl "tigged" him she did so with a woefully apologetic air as if she[Pg 159] would say: "Excuse my touching you, sir, but it\'s only a game, you know. I\'ll take care not to presume when we meet on Monday morning."

Luckily he did not stay long, and the girls resumed their attempt to tie my legs together with grass ropes, their motive being to stuff my mouth with brambles. I invited them down to the bothy for tea, and they rushed off to lay the table.

"And we\'ll look into a\' yer drawers and places," cried Jean, "and read a\' yer love-letters."

"If you could read I believe you would read them," I shouted after her.

"Eh! What an insult!" she cried. "Aw\'ll just go straucht doon to Maggie and tell her no to hae ye!"

After tea Gladys suddenly said: "Come on, we\'ll play at schules, eh?" The idea was hailed with delight, and Annie requisitioned the services of my new braces for a strap, and ranged us round the fire.

"Now," she said, "this is playtime and you are all outside, and when I blow the whistle you\'ll all come in."

"Blaw yer bugle," said Jean, "just to mak it like it was when ye were at the schule." So I played the "Fall In" and went out to play. I came in late.

"Why are you late?" demanded Annie.

I looked round the room vacantly.

"Yes!" I said with a nod of enlightenment.

[Pg 160]

The girls giggled, and Annie had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

"Where have you been, sir?"

"Oh, no!" I cried, "at least I don\'t think so!"

Annie had to sit down and laugh.

"That\'s no fair," she said, "there shud be nae funnin\' in the schule."

I sat down on the fender and pulled a face that Alfred Lester might have envied. Annie went into fits of laughter.

"Tell ye what, Annie," said Ellen, "we\'ll put the Mester oot, and we\'ll play oorsells," and I was dismissed the school. After deliberation they agreed to allow me to be an inspector provided I did not say anything.

When bairns play school they always put on the fine English. The teacher\'s main duty is to call erring pupils out and punish them.

"Now, Ellen Smith, what is two and two?"

"Four."

"Very good. Now we\'ll have an object lesson. What animal do we get milk from, Janet?"

"The cow."

"Very good. Now we\'ll have some geography. Where is the town of—?"

"Give us spellin\' instead," cried Gladys.

"Come out, girl!" and Gladys was punished severely. Then Jean was punished for laughing.

"It\'s my chance o\' bein\' teacher noo," cried Ellen and Janet at the same time, and a treble[Pg 161] scuffle for the strap followed. Janet got it.

"Now," she began, "I\'ll be Mister Macdonald. Put yer hands behind yer backs, and the first one that moves will hear about it!" They sat up like statues.

"Now, Jean Broon, you stand up and recite the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard!" And Jean stood up and recited the first verse dramatically.

"That\'ll do. Sit down. Ellen Smith, I want you to say the first verse of Wordsworth\'s Ode to the Imitations of Immorality."

"P-Please, sir," tittered Gladys, "the inspector\'s laughin\' like onything!"

I laughed immoderately, but it wasn\'t at Janet\'s malapropism that I laughed so much. I thought of Mrs. Wilks, the charwoman, who looked after the flat another man and I shared in Croydon. One morning she did not arrive to make the breakfast, and I went out to look for her. I found the old woman—she was sixty-three—standing at the foot of the stairs weeping.

"Great Scot!" I cried, "what\'s the matter?"

"My \'usband ain\'t goin\' to allow me to char for you young gentlemen again."

"What for?" I asked in amazement.

"He ... he accuses me of \'avin\' immortal relations wiv you," she sobbed.

I hasten to add that her relations with us were not immortal: we sacked her a week later for pinching the cream.

"Sorry, Janet," I said at length, "proceed[Pg 162] with your Imitations of Immorality, although personally I don\'t see the need for them; the real thing\'s good enough for me."

"Now," she said, "I\'ll be Mister Neill now."

Annie at once began to sing "Tipperary"; Ellen began to pull Gladys\'s hair; Jean pretended that she was biting a huge apple ... and the teacher Janet took a cigarette from the box on the table and lit it.

"You gross libellers!" I cried, and I chased them out of the bothy.

*         *         *

To-night I had a long walk with Margaret. I tried to make her talk, for I want so much to know her views on things.

"You talk," she said; "I like to listen."

"But," I protested, "I\'m always talking to you, and you listen all the time. I want to know what is in that wee head of yours ... although I suppose that I ought to be satisfied with its exterior."

"You see," she said slowly and somewhat sadly, "I am not clever; I am only an ordinary farmer\'s daughter working in the dairy and the fields. If I told you what I was thinking you would not be interested."

We walked many yards in silence.

"It is all a mistake!" she suddenly burst out passionately. "I am not good enough for you, and when my bonny face is gone you will hate me. We have nothing in common, and if you met me in London you wouldn\'t be interested in me at all. You will bring[Pg 163] clever women to the house and I—I will sit in a corner and say nothing, for I won\'t understand the things that you talk about. I am afraid to go to London with you."

"We\'ll stay here then," I said quietly.

"No!" she cried, "not that! I will stay here, but you must go to your work and your clever friends. O! it\'s all been a mistake!" She sat down on a fallen tree and wept silently. I sat down beside her and placed my arm round her shoulders.

"Margaret," I said softly, "we\'ll have a soul to soul talk about it. I\'ll tell you very very frankly what I think about the whole matter, and I\'ll try to deceive neither you nor myself.

"Intellectually you are not a soul-mate to me. That can\'t be possible seeing that you have never had the chance to develop your intellect. I know girls whose intellect is brilliant and whose sense of humour is delicious ... but I don\'t love them. I like them; I love a witty conversation with them, but ... I don\'t want to touch them. The touch of your hand sends a thrill through me, and there is no other hand in the world that can do that. I want to caress you, to hug you, to kiss your lips, to kiss your lovely neck. Margaret, I want you ... and you are not my soul-mate. Margaret, I must have you.

"You see, dear, love is a thing that cannot be reasoned with. I once wrote down on paper a list of the qualities I wanted in the[Pg 164] woman who should be my wife. She was to have blue eyes, a Grecian nose, auburn hair; she was to be tall and imperious; she was to be a fine pianist. Dear, your eyes are grey; your nose isn\'t Grecian; you aren\'t tall, and your limit as a pianist is I\'m a Little Pilgrim played with one finger. You\'re hopeless, madam, but, dash it all!... I\'ll buy an auto-piano!

"According to all the rules I oughtn\'t to find any interest in you at all. Do you know that popular song You Made Me Love You? That\'s the only popular song I ever struck that has any philosophy in it. It has more real pathos in it than The Rosary and Tosti\'s Goodbye rolled into one.

"\'You made me love you; I didn\'t want to do it,\' ... Margaret, that\'s the true story of love. Love is blind they say, but the truth is that love is mad. I didn\'t want to love you; my mind kept telling me that you were not the right woman ... and here I sit in paradise because your head is on my shoulder. The whole thing\'s absurd and irrational. I almost believe that there is a real Cupid who fires his arrows broadcast; of course the little fellow is blind and he hits the wrong people."

I turned her face towards mine.

"Margaret, do you love me?"

"I love you," she whispered and she nestled more closely into my shoulder.

"And I love you," I replied, and kissed her brow. "It may be all a mistake, darling,[Pg 165] but you and I are going to be man and wife."

"Anyway," I added, "we have no illusions about it. We\'ve looked at the thing frankly and openly. We are blind, but we are going into it with our eyes open."............