all that's most evil in your soul on to your face, like a
rash. You never know what'll happen with him--except his fee. Nothing
less than ten thousand dollars, if you get off cheap."

"I don't think he's that kind of a man at _all_," said I, "Why, just to
prove to you that he isn't, he's offered to paint me for nothing!"

They all roared at this, and wouldn't explain why. I didn't like them
much, for five minutes; but after that I couldn't help forgiving them
again.

We took the Gray Dragon for Alloway and for Burns's birthplace, but the
boys jumped into their car and kept close behind us. Hardly had we got
into the tiny thatched house--once a mere "clay biggin"--where Burns was
born, than the four appeared on the scene. Mrs. West was scarcely civil
to them at first, until Basil whispered (only in fun, of course, but she
took it seriously, as she often does when people think they're being
humorous), "If you're nasty to those boys, it will be a bad
advertisement. They won't read your books or tell their friends they're
the best books going!" She was quite kind and elderly-sisterly to them
after that. But nice boys as they are, it did grate on me having them
make jokes every minute, even about that wonderful, pathetic little room
with the railed-off furniture and curtained wall-bed.

Luckily I had been reading about the cottage and everything else
concerning the Burns family while I dressed. I knew already how Burns's
father built the tiny house with his own hands; how the night that
Robert was born, a fearful storm came up which threatened to sweep away
the whole biggin; and how the poor young mother had to be hustled off to
a neighbour's cottage. How little the poor couple guessed that the baby
born "in thunder, lightning and in rain" would make of the clay biggin a
world's shrine, to be bought by the nation for four thousand pounds.
Maybe it cost five pounds to build. How I did want to believe that from
one of the bowls kept on a shelf in that room of the wall-bed Burns had
eaten his porridge as a child. Of course that would be almost too good
to be true; but he did eat his porridge in that room, anyhow--and often
wanted more than he could get. What brains of genius have been nourished
on porridge and oaten cake in this country of ours! I felt more than
ever proud of my Scottish blood as I stood in that low-ceilinged
cottage; and I wondered if Sir S. had the same glorious thrill. I didn't
know if he had ever before