just for the sake of getting a
prize. Peter confided to Nestie afterwards that he had really done his
best to describe a close race for the Kilmarnock Cup, but that he didn't
think there were six words properly spelt from beginning to end, and
that if he escaped without a thrashing he would treat Nestie to half a
dozen bottles of ginger-beer.

Regarding the winner--for that was the other subject--there was a
unanimous and sad judgment; that Dunc Robertson might have a chance, but
that Thomas John, the head of the Dowbiggins, would carry off the prize,
as he had carried off all the other prizes; and that, if so, they would
let him know how they all loved him at the Town Hall, and that it would
be wise for him to go home with the Count's prize and all the other
prizes in a cab, with the windows up.

The prize-giving in the Town Hall was one of the great events in the
Muirtown year, and to it the memory of a Seminary lad goes back with
keen interest. All the forenoon the Provost and the bailies had been
sitting in the class-room of the Seminary, holding Latin books in their
hands, which they opened anywhere, and wagging their heads in solemn
approval over the translation by Thomas John and other chosen worthies,
while the parents wandered from place to place and identified their
sons, who refused to take any notice of them unless nobody was looking.
What mothers endured cannot be put into words, when they saw their
darling boys (whom they had seen dressed that morning in their Sunday
clothes, and sent away in perfect array, with directions that they were
not to break their collars nor soil their jackets, nor disarrange their
hair the whole day, or they need not come home in the evening) turn up
in a class-room before the respectables of Muirtown as if their heads
had not known a brush for six months, with Speug's autograph upon their
white collar, a button gone from their waistcoat, and an ounce of flour
in a prominent place on their once speckless jacket.

"Yes," said one matron to another, with the calmness of despair, "that
is my Jimmy, I canna deny it; but ye may well ask, for he's more like a
street waufie than onything else. On a day like this, and when I see
what a sight he's made of himself in two hours I could almost wish he
had been born a girl."

"Losh keep us, Mistress Chalmers, ye maunna speak like that, for it's no
chancy, he micht be taken away sudden, and ye would have regrets; forbye
your laddie's nai