his whole powers. For some time he had, as I have already hinted,
succeeded in interesting his boy-pupils in their studies; and now
the progress they made began to be appreciable to themselves as well
as to their tutor. This of course made them more happy and more
diligent. There were no attempts now to work upon their parents for
a holiday; no real or pretended head or tooth-aches, whose
disability was urged against the greater torture of ill-conceded
mental labour. They began in fact to understand; and, in proportion
to the beauty and value of the thing understood, to understand is to
enjoy. Therefore the laird and his lady could not help seeing that
the boys were doing well, far better in fact than they had ever done
before; and consequently began not only to prize Hugh's services,
but to think more highly of his office than had been their wont.
The laird would now and then invite him to join him in a tumbler of
toddy after dinner, or in a ride round the farm after school hours.
But it must be confessed that these approaches to friendliness were
rather irksome to Hugh; for whatever the laird might have been as a
collegian, he was certainly now nothing more than a farmer. Where
David Elginbrod would have described many a "bonny sicht," the laird
only saw the probable results of harvest, in the shape of figures in
his banking book. On one occasion, Hugh roused his indignation by
venturing to express his admiration of the delightful mingling of
colours in a field where a good many scarlet poppies grew among the
green blades of the corn, indicating, to the agricultural eye, the
poverty of the soil where they were found. This fault in the soil,
the laird, like a child, resented upon the poppies themselves.

"Nasty, ugly weyds! We'll hae ye admirin' the smut neist," said he,
contemptuously; "'cause the bairns can bleck ane anither's faces
wi't."