There was a black year when the things of this world, especially its pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret he would rather be good at the high jump than the author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”  That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind.  One afternoon Margaret was at home making a glen-garry for him out of a piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded in from school, crying, “Come quick, mother, and you’ll see him.”  Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from Gavin and his friends.  “Did you take stock of him, mother?” the boy asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back.  “He’s a Papist!—­a sore sight, mother, a sore sight.  We stoned him for persecuting the noble Martyrs.”

“When Gavin was twelve he went to the university, and also got a place in a shop as errand boy.  He used to run through the streets between his work and his classes.  Potatoes and salt fish, which could then be got at two pence the pound if bought by the half-hundred weight, were his food.  There was not always a good meal for two, yet when Gavin reached home at night there was generally something ready for him, and Margaret had supped “hours ago.”  Gavin’s hunger urged him to fall to, but his love for his mother made him watchful.

“What did you have yourself, mother?” he would demand suspiciously.

“Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you.”

“What had you?”

“I had potatoes, for one thing.”

“And dripping?”

“You may be sure.”

“Mother, you’re cheating me.  The dripping hasn’t been touched since yesterday.”

“I dinna—­don’t—­care for dripping—­no much.”

Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer little figure.

“Do you think I’ll stand this, mother?  Will I let myself be pampered with dripping and every delicacy while you starve?”

“Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping.”

“Then I’ll give up my classes, and we can have butter.”

“I assure you I’m no hungry.  It’s different wi’ a growing laddie.”

“I’m not a growing laddie,” Gavin would say, bitterly; “but, mother, I warn you that not another bite passes my throat till I see you eating too.”

So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and when she said “I can eat no more,” Gavin retorted sternly, “Nor will I, for fine I see through you.”

These two were as one far more than most married people, and, just as Gavin in his childhood reflected his mother, she now reflected him.  The people for whom she sewed thought it was contact with them that had rubbed the broad Scotch from her tongue, but she Was only keeping pace with Gavin.  When she was excited the Harvie words came back to her, as they come back to me.  I have taught the English language all my life, and I try to write it, but everything I say in this book I first think to myself in the Doric.  This, too, I notice, that in talking to myself I am broader than when gossiping with the farmers of the glen, who send their children to me to learn English, and then jeer at them if they say “old lights” instead of “auld lichts.”