to speak of. The neighbors expected this to bring her to the dust,
but it only showed what a mother can do. In a few months that
child had a chin with the best of them.

Margaret's brother died, but she remained in his single room, and,
ever with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived
to keep Gavin at school. Everything a woman's fingers can do
Margaret's did better than most, and among the wealthy people who
employed her--would that I could have the teaching of the sons of
such as were good to her in those hard days!--her gentle manner
was spoken of. For though Margaret had no schooling, she was a
lady at heart, moving and almost speaking as one even in Harvie,
where they did not perhaps like her the better for it.

At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established
Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter
Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was
eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as
ever medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the
gallery Gavin watched the minister's every movement, noting that
the first thing to do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your
face with your hands, as if the exalted position affected you like
a strong light, and the second to move the big Bible slightly, to
show that the kirk officer, not having had a university education,
could not be expected to know the very spot on which it ought to
lie. Gavin saw that the minister joined in the singing more like
one countenancing a seemly thing than because he needed it
himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and again after the
congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It was