owards the table and set down
his book. Then from the coat-pocket where Paul had plainly seen it
bulging he drew the roll of manuscript.

'Paul,' said the old man, 'I've been readin' this farrago, and the less
that's said about it the better. I obsairve that the main part of it's
devoted to the exaggerated satire of your neighbours. That's a spirit
I'm sorry to notice in ye, and I regret to see that ye're already
looking sulky at rebuke. The vairse,' pursued Armstrong, 'is mainly
sickly, whining, puling stuff, as far away from Nature and experience as
it's easily possible to be. Now, I invite ye. Listen to this.'

He began to read with a fine disdain:

'"Come not when I am dead
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave."'

Paul averted his head, and set one hand before his face. Months ago,
when May Gold's perfidy was a new thing, and the whole world was
darkened, he had copied these lines from the Poet Laureate with tears,
and they had seemed to him a perfect expression of himself. The old man
ground out the lines with increasing scorn, and Paul began to grin, and
then to shake with suppressed laughter. Armstrong went on to the end
unyieldingly.

'I'm not denying,' he said, a moment later, 'that I've found here and
there a salt sprinkle o' common-sense. But _that_, my lad,' banging
a hand on the manuscript page before him, 'is simply unadulterated
rubbish. It's the silliest thing in the haul collection.'

Paul's reverence for his father's judgment in such matters was a
tradition and a religion. 'Old Armstrong' was the parish pride as
scholar and critic. The Rev. Roderic Murchison, who was a Master of Arts
of Aberdeen, sat at the gray little man's feet like a pupil. Armstrong
had none of the minister's Greek and Latin, but he was his master in
English letters. In spite of this awful prescription of authority Paul
spirted laughter.

'It's Tennyson!' he spluttered. 'It's the Poet Laureate!'

'Then,' said Armstrong, 'the Poet Laureate's a drivelling idiot, like
his predecessor.'

'What?' Paul asked, underneath his breath. He had never listened to such
blasphemy.

'In my day,' said Armstrong, 'a poet laid a table for men to eat and
drink at. We'd Sir Walter's beef and bannocks, and puir young Byron's
Athol brose. Wha calls this mingling o' skim milk an' treacle the wine
o' the soul a poet ought to pour?

'Scott and Byron!' cried Paul, amazed out of all reverence. 'Why,
there's more poetry in Tennyson'