he rudiments of
education. Some things, however, which they read and heard in the little
quiet room at Kirklands sank into their hearts as they had never done
when they read them as the stereotyped portion of the Bible-reading
lesson amid the mingled jangle of slates and pencils and pattering feet,
with the hum of rough northern tongues, which prevailed in the parish
school-room.

To Geordie even this discordant medium of education had been denied.
Grace had set her heart on having him sent to school during the past
winter. She saw what a precious boon such an opportunity appeared in
Geordie's eyes when she suggested it to him. But Farmer Gowrie had to be
consulted, and finding the herd-boy useful in winter as well as during
the summer months, he decided that he could not possibly spare Geordie.
And as for Granny Baxter, she could not understand what anybody could
want with more learning who was, able to earn money. So Geordie had one
day lingered behind the other scholars to tell Grace that the idea of
going to school even during the winter quarter must be given up. There
was always a manly reticence about the boy which made one feel that
words of sympathy would be patronising; but Grace could see what a
bitter disappointment it was, though he appeared quite unalterable in
his decision that he "belonged to Gowrie," when Grace tried to arrange
the matter by an interview with the farmer. He could only claim the boy
week by week, and the young teacher did not see the necessity for such
self-denial on Geordie's part.

Then Grace's store of pocket-money had been devoted to sending little
Jean to school. This arrangement had been a source of great delight to
Geordie--much more of an event to him, indeed, than to the phlegmatic
little Jean, to whom the primer did not contain such precious
possibilities as it did to her brother's eyes. Grace had arranged that
she should go to a girls' school lately opened in the parish. It was the
one to which Elsie Gray, the forester's daughter, went. On her way to
school she had to pass Granny Baxter's cottage, and after Jean was
installed as her fellow-scholar, Elsie used generally to call and see if
the little girl was ready to start, so that they might walk along the
road together.

Elsie was a pale, fragile-looking girl, who looked as if she had grown
among crowded streets, rather than blossomed in the open valley, with
its flowing river and breezy hillsides. She was a very silent chi