“How many children have you?” asked the agent.

“Six,” said my friend.

“Oh,” said the agent.  “Well—­let’s see!  Six is a great many.  My principal is a little afraid of a family with so many children.  They damage the houses a good deal, you know.  I’ll have to see.  I’m sorry.  I’d have liked to let the house to you.  H’m!  Are all the children at home?” “No,” said my friend, and pulled a lang face.  “They’re a’ in the kirkyard.”

“Oh—­but that’s very different,” said the agent, growing brichter at once.  “That’s a very different case.  You’ve my most sincere sympathy.  And I’ll be glad to let you the house.”

Sae the lease was signed.  And my friend went hame, rejoicing.  On the way he stopped at the kirkyard, and called the bairns, whom he’d left there to play as he went by!

But this is a serious matter, this one o’ bairns.  Folk must have them, or the country will gae to ruin.  And it maun be made possible for people to bring up their weans wi’oot sae much trouble and difficulty as there is for them the noo.

Profiteering we canna endure—­and will’na, I’m telling you.  Let the profiteer talk o’ vested richts and interests—­or whine o’ them, since he whines mair than he talks.  It was tae muckle talk o’ that sort we were hearing before the war and in its early days.  It was one of the things that was wrang wi’ the world.  Is there any richt i’ the world that’s as precious as that tae life and liberty and love?  And didna our young men gie that up at the first word?

Then dinna let your profiteer talk to me of the richts of his money.  He has duties and obligations as well as richts, and when he’s lived up to a’ o’ them, it’ll be time for him tae talk o’ his richts again, and we’ll maybe be in a mood tae listen.  It’s the same wi’ the workingman.  We maun produce, i’ this day.  We maun mak’ up for a’ the waste and the loss o’ these last years.  And the workingman kens as weel as do I that after a fire the first thing a man does is tae mak’ the hoose habitable again.

He mends the roof.  He patches the holes i’ the walls.  Wad he be painting the veranda before he did those things?  Not unless he was a fule—­no, nor building a new bay window for the parlor.  Sae let us a’ be thinking of what’s necessary before we come to thought of luxuries.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Weel, I’m near the end o’ my tether.  It’s been grand tae sit doon and talk things ower wi’ you.  We’re a’ friends together, are we no?  Whiles I’ll ha’ said things wi’ which you’ll no agree; whiles, perhaps, we’ve been o’ the same way o’ thinking.  And what I’m surest of is that there’s no a question in this world aboot which reasonable men canna agree.

We maun get together.  We maun talk things over.  Here and noo there’s ane great trouble threatening us.  The man who works isna satisfied.  Nor is the man who pays him.  I’ll no speak of maister and man, for the day when that was true of employer and workman has gone for aye.  They’re partners the noo.  They maun work together, produce together, for the common gude.