Priorsford (Historical Novel). O. Douglas

      CHAPTER VI

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      '. . . with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school.'

      As You Like It.

      Two days after their arrival in Priorsford Peter and Alison made their first acquaintance with school.

      They came down to breakfast looking rather over-awed, and started on their porridge in silence, but Peter, who was never quiet long, began as if continuing a recent conversation:

      'Of course it isn't a real school or Alison couldn't go to it; I'm going to a real school when I'm nine! this is mostly girls.'

      Alison looked anxiously at her mother as she asked:

      'What'll they do when they find I don't know anything?'

      'Why, darling, they don't expect you to know anything: you're going there to learn.'

      'She can't even say her alphabet,' said Peter, and added boastfully, 'I can say it backwards.'

      'He can say it backwards,' echoed Alison dismally.

      'It won't do him much good,' her mother assured her. 'They've got new ways of teaching, and I don't know that they pay much attention to the alphabet now. I know children aren't taught as we were taught: a b ab, s o so. You'll be able to tell me about the new ways.'

      'Mummy,' Peter said, dealing with an egg, 'what's the teacher like?'

      'There are two teachers. Miss Main has been keeping school since ever I knew her, and her hair is quite white, and she's very wise. She's taught more boys and girls than she can remember, but I don't expect any of them have forgotten Miss Main. Although she's so clever she's very patient and won't expect too much from little girls who are only five. As a matter of fact, you'll probably be taught by Miss Callard, who helps Miss Main. She is so young that I'm sure she hasn't forgotten her first day at school, and her face is round and pink and sweet. Somehow, she made me think of nice things to eat, or is it that her name recalls "butter-scotch"? Anyway, I know you'll like her. . . . There are twelve girls and three boys at school just now, beginning at five and ending at ten. I saw them all running about in the garden yesterday. They get out at eleven for ten minutes, and morning school finishes at a quarter to one. Elsie will fetch you home and you won't go back in the afternoon. . . . Run up now, and wash your hands and get your coats on. I'll take you myself this morning, and you'll be able to show Elsie the way to-morrow.'

      It was a fine morning, with a touch of frost in the air: mist lay in the valleys, but the hill tops were sharply clear against the pale blue of the sky. The trees in their burning autumn beauty were reflected in Tweed's quiet waters.

      'Look,' said Jean, laying a hand on Peter's shoulder, 'aren't these peaks beautiful, piercing up behind the roundbacked hills? They're called the Shielgreen Kips, and some day we'll go there, perhaps when Jock comes, and Mhor: they love the Kips.'

      'That's the Tweed,' Peter said. 'It's rather a small river, isn't it?'

      'It's a lovely river,' Jean cried jealously. 'Peter, you're almost as bad as the American who called it "a creek." I'd rather have the man who declared, with no regard for the truth, that it was as wide as the Hooghly at Calcutta.'

      'Oh, I like it,' Peter hastened to protest. 'Jock told me it was the best river in the world, and he's going to take me to fish in it some day. . . . Barty says that in America the rivers are so big you can't see to the other side of them. Silly sort of rivers they must be!'

      'Well,' said Jean tolerantly, 'America's such a huge place--gigantic mountains, rolling prairies, houses and hotels sky-scraping--so I suppose they've got to have rivers to match. . . . But I've seen Tweed big enough. When a thaw comes suddenly, and the snow melts on the hills and the rain pours, then Tweed comes roaring down in spate, carrying away sheep and gates and trees, and when it gets to Priorsford it sometimes floods out all over the place. I've seen swans swimming on Tweed Green and people rescued from top windows!'

      'Oh, I hope it does it soon,' said Peter.

      'I hope not. It's very poor fun for the people who get all their belongings ruined with water and mud.'

      'It can't get to The Rigs,' Alison said comfortably, 'so it doesn't much matter.'

      Jean, amazed at the heartlessness displayed by her offspring, felt she ought to improve the occasion with a homily on thought for others, but they had reached the gate of the school, and Alison's hand had tightened on hers.

      They went up to the door of the pretty creeper-covered house, and rang the bell.

      'To-morrow,' Jean told the children, 'you'll go in at the back with the others, but this morning I want to introduce you to Miss Main.'

      They were shown into a drawing-room containing some fine old furniture and many portraits of dead and gone Mains. They had no reason, these dead men, to feel ashamed of their descendant. The same spirit that had kept them going through the Indian Mutiny and the Crimean War was alive in Miss Agnes Main. She taught and trained these children with all the care and energy she was capable of. It was her job and she did it. People said it was absurd that a