wore.  As yet all his earnings had gone to pay board to his grandmother, and for present necessities in the shape of shoes and corduroys.  He had in one of his pockets a little chamois bag, containing a few shillings, which he always carried about with him; and it was one of his recreations to spread them on one of the flat, grey stones and count the silver pieces as they glittered in the sun.  He knew well what he meant to do with them when the pile grew large enough; but its growth was a very slow one, and required much self-denial on Geordie’s part, seeing that the component parts of each shilling were generally gathered in a stray penny now and then, which he earned by holding a market-going farmer’s cob; and if, by a rare chance, a sixpence happened to be the unexpected result of one such service, then Geordie felt that he was really getting rich, and would soon be able to buy what he had wished for so long.  It was not anything for himself, or even for Jean, as might have been expected.  Somebody had once told him that if his grandmother only had an ear-trumpet she would be able to hear people when they spoke to her.  Geordie had the vaguest idea of what such an instrument might be like, but decided that probably it bore some resemblance in size or sound to the horn that summoned his cows home; and having ascertained how much money it would cost, he resolved that he would buy one for his granny whenever he could save the sum.

The boy’s heart was full of tender pity for the old deaf woman, with her weird helpless ways, at whose side he had grown since his infancy; though she could hardly have been said to “bring him up,” for Granny Baxter had been shiftless and unlovable when she was in possession of her faculties, and her character had not improved under her trying infirmities.  Her grandson, however, always treated her with a tender patience which no querulousness of the old woman could weary.  Not so little Jean.  Only once she could remember her brother looking very grave and grieved, and it was one day when she had refused to do something that the old woman wanted, and put her in a white heat of passion by her rebellion.  Having escaped beyond the reach of her poor granny’s tottering feet, and, finding her way to the field where Geordie was herding, she began to narrate her story in triumph, when her brother’s grave silence made her feel how naughty she had been.  After that day little Jean always tried to “mind” granny more, though she never attained to the same unwearied service as Geordie.

That Jean’s education was being sadly neglected her brother felt painfully, and he had made various efforts to teach her the little he knew himself; but the knowledge contained in the “Third Primer” barely sufficed for teaching purposes, and Geordie found, moreover, that the little Jean was by no means an apt scholar.  Indeed, the most hopeless confusion continued to prevail in her small mind concerning the letters of the alphabet, notwithstanding all his efforts.