began to think it might be of advantage to learning in
general, if at least half the boys and girls at school, and three
parts of every Sunday congregation, were as dumb as Sir Gilbert
Galbraith. When at length he set him to Greek, he was astonished at
the avidity with which he learned it! He had hardly got him over
tupto, {compilers note: spelled in Greek: Tau, Upsilon with stress,
Pi, Tau, Omega} when he found him one day so intent upon the
Greek Testament, that, exceptionally keen of hearing as he was, he
was quite unaware that anyone had entered the room.

What Gibbie made of Mr. Sclater's prayers, either in congregational
or family devotion, I am at some loss to imagine. Beside his
memories of the direct fervid outpouring and appeal of Janet, in
which she seemed to talk face to face with God, they must have
seemed to him like the utterances of some curiously constructed
wooden automaton, doing its best to pray, without any soul to be
saved, any weakness to be made strong, any doubt to be cleared, any
hunger to be filled. What can be less like religion than the
prayers of a man whose religion is his profession, and who, if he
were not "in the church," would probably never pray at all? Gibbie,
however, being the reverse of critical, must, I can hardly doubt,
have seen in them a good deal more than was there--a pitiful faculty
to the man who cultivates that of seeing in everything less than is
there.

To Mrs. Sclater, it was at first rather depressing, and for a time
grew more and more painful, to have a live silence by her side. But
when she came into rapport with the natural utterance of the boy,
his presence grew more like a constant speech, and that which was
best in her was not unfrequently able to say for the boy what he
would have said could he have spoken: the nobler part of her nature
was in secret alliance with the thoughts and feelings of Gibbie.
But this relation between them, though perceptible, did not become
at all plain to her until after she had established more definite
means of communication. Gibbie, for his part, full of the holy
simplicities of the cottage, had a good many things to meet which
disappointed, perplexed, and shocked him. Middling good people are
shocked at the wickedness of the wicked; Gibbie, who knew both so
well, and what ought to be expected, was shocked only at the
wickedness of the righteous. He never came quite to understand Mr.
Sclater: the inconsistent never