for men folk to ken ower muckle about women's work."

"You do it yoursel'," Tommy argued.

"I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly.

The children knew that remarks of this sort had reference to their
mother, of whom he never spoke more directly; indeed he seldom spoke to
them at all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a
slovenly cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that
their presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable
and morose and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he
seemed to have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped
their voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped
he heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" Though he
seldom, spoke sharply to them, his face did not lose its loneliness at
sight of them. Elspeth was his favorite (somewhat to the indignation of
both); they found this out without his telling them or even showing it
markedly, and when they wanted to ask anything of him she was deputed to
do it, but she did it quavering, and after drawing farther away from him
instead of going nearer. A dreary life would have lain before them had
they not been sent to school.

There were at this time three schools in Thrums, the chief of them ruled
over by the terrible Cathro (called Knuckly when you were a street away
from him). It was a famous school, from which a band of three or four or
even six marched every autumn to the universities as determined after
bursaries as ever were Highlandmen to lift cattle, and for the same
reason, that they could not do without.

A very different kind of dominie was Cursing Ballingall, who had been
dropped at Thrums by a travelling circus, and first became familiar to
the town as, carrying two carpet shoes, two books, a pillow, and a
saucepan, which were all his belongings, he wandered from manse to manse
offering to write sermons for the ministers at circus prices. That
scheme failing, he was next seen looking in at windows in search of a
canny calling, and eventually he cut one of his braces into a pair of
tawse, thus with a single stroke of the knife, making himself a
school-master and lop-sided for life. His fee was but a penny a week,
"with a bit o' the swine when your father kills," and sometimes there
were so many pupils on a form that they could only rise as one. During
the first half of the scholastic day Ballingall's shouts and pounces