The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill. Sir Hall Caine
read or write as well as other boys of his age, and his grammar was still that of the peasant people with whom he loved to associate.
Chief among these was our gardener, old Tommy the Mate, who lived in a mud cabin on the shore and passed the doctor's house on his way to work. Long ago Tommy had told the boy a tremendous story. It was about Arctic exploration and an expedition he had joined in search of Franklin. This had made an overpowering impression on Martin, who for mouths afterwards would stand waiting at the gate until Tommy was going by, and then say:
"Been to the North Pole to-day, Tommy?"
Whereupon Tommy's "starboard eye" would blink and he would answer:
"Not to-day boy. I don't go to the North Pole more nor twice a day now."
"Don't you, though?" the boy would say, and this would happen every morning.
But later on Martin conceived the idea that the North Pole was the locality immediately surrounding his father's house, and every day he would set out on voyages of exploration over the garden, the road and the shore, finding, by his own account, a vast world of mysterious things and undiscovered places. By some means—nobody knew how—the boy who could not learn his lessons studied his father's German atlas, and there was not a name in it north of Spitzbergen which he had not got by heart. He transferred them all to Ellan, so that the Sky Hill became Greenland, and the Black Head became Franz Josef Land, and the Nun's Well became Behring Strait, and Martha's Gullet became New Siberia, and St. Mary's Rock, with the bell anchored on it, became the pivot of the earth itself.
He could swim like a fish and climb a rock like a lizard, and he kept a log-book, on the back pages of the Doctor's book of visits, which he called his "diarrhea." And now if you lost him you had only to look up to the ridge of the roof, or perhaps on to the chimney stack, which he called his crow's nest, and there you found him, spying through his father's telescope and crying out:
"Look-out ahead! Ice floes from eighty-six latitude fourteen point north, five knots to the starboard bow."
His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this, but there is no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a marvellous story. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's boy, and saw myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side. I suppose my poor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being a sentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor's boy as his sister.
The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming. It did not come until the next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bang than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to be a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had been called William Rufus. His hat was tied over his ears with a tape from his mother's apron, and he wore a long pair of his father's knitted stockings which covered his boots and came up to his thighs.
He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the previous day, but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to his dog that the chair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the sheep-skin rug was floating ice.
After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had come, I tried to approach my subject. Being such a clever little woman I went artfully to work, speaking first about my father, my mother, my cousin, Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the intention of showing how rich I was in relations, so that he might see how poor he was himself.
I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor's boy did not know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in review he only said "Is she any good?" or "Is he a stunner?"
At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I took it.
"Haven't you got a sister?" I said.
"Not me!" said the doctor's boy, with a dig of emphasis on the last word which cut me to the quick.
"Wouldn't you like to have one?"
"Sisters isn't no good," said the doctor's boy, and he instanced "chaps" at school—Jimmy Christopher and others—whose sisters were afraid of everything—lobsters and crabs and even the sea.
I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little heart was beginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat which was choking me, I said:
"I'm not afraid of the sea—not crabs neither."
In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the sea-blue eyes looked aslant at me.
"Isn't you, though?"
"No."
That did it. I could see it did. And when a minute afterwards, I invited the doctor's boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all, and sat by my right side, while William Rufus, who had formed an instant attachment for me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my lap.
Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might call downstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor's boy telling his mother what I was. I was a "stunner."
EIGHTH CHAPTER
From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I belonged to him, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin and her stepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his property.
It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled by a Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacher was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of the colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head. But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and when she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with great rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped in a charity school.
Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget, who had exercised her influence through the chairman, by means of his account with the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to display her gratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me that my character had gone to school before me, for in order that I might be directly under her eye, she placed me in the last seat in the lowest class, although my mother's daily teaching would have entitled me to go higher.
I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief as a goat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I deserved the fate that followed.
One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school. I held my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girl beside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter.
"Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her desk, but I went on whispering and the girls began to choke with laughter.
I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying something about herself—making game, perhaps, of her personal appearance—for after a moment she said, in her rapid accents:
"Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been saying."
I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer.
"Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head, haven't you?"
But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress said:
"Mary O'Neill, come forward."
She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to obey when I caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming with satisfaction, seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see."
I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk, came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:
"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out, miss, this very moment."
I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement.
"Don't