Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have been the youngest housekeeper¹ ever known in Thrums, but she was never very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with the blind down; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the besom from, him, saying:  
"It's an ill thing for men folk to ken² ower muckle about women's work."
 
"You do it yoursel'," Tommy argued.
 
"I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly.
 
The children knew that remarks of this sort had reference to their mother, of whom he never spoke³ more directly; indeed he seldom spoke to them at all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a slovenly⁴ cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that their presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable and morose⁵ and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he seemed to have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped their voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped he heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" Though he seldom, spoke sharply to them, his face did not lose its loneliness at sight of them. Elspeth was his favorite (somewhat to the indignation of both); they found this out without his telling them or even showing it markedly, and when they wanted to ask anything of him she was deputed to do it, but she did it quavering, and after drawing farther away from him instead of going nearer. A dreary⁶ life would have lain before them had they not been sent to school.
 
There were at this time three schools in Thrums, the chief of them ruled over by the terrible Cathro (called Knuckly⁷ when you were a street away from him). It was a famous school, from which a band of three or four or even six marched every autumn to the universities as determined⁸ after bursaries as ever were Highlandmen to lift cattle, and for the same reason, that they could not do without.
 
A very different kind of dominie was Cursing Ballingall, who had been dropped at Thrums by a travelling circus, and first became familiar to the town as, carrying two carpet shoes, two books, a pillow, and a saucepan, which were all his belongings⁹, 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 canny¹⁰ calling, and eventually he cut one of his braces¹² 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 scholastic¹³ day Ballingall's shouts and pounces¹⁴ 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, languor¹⁵ 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 contemplated¹⁶ 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 transacted¹⁷, very nervously¹⁸ on Miss Ailie's part, she offered him his choice between ginger¹⁹ wine and what she falteringly²⁰ called wh-wh-whiskey. He partook in the polite national manner, which is thus:
 
"You will take so............