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Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood by George MacDonald
page 39 of 260 (15%)

"There's Kirsty, papa," I suggested.

"Yes; there's Kirsty," he returned with a sly smile. "Kirsty can do
everything, can't she?"

"She can speak Gaelic," I said with a tone of triumph, bringing her
rarest accomplishment to the forefront.

"I wish you could speak Gaelic," said my father, thinking of his wife,
I believe, whose mother tongue it was. "But that is not what you want
most to learn. Do you think Kirsty could teach you to read English?"

"Yes, I do."

My father again meditated.

"Let us go and ask her," he said at length, taking my hand.

I capered with delight, nor ceased my capering till we stood on
Kirsty's earthen floor. I think I see her now, dusting one of her deal
chairs, as white as soap and sand could make it, for the minister to
sit on. She never called him _the master_, but always _the minister_.
She was a great favourite with my father, and he always behaved as a
visitor in her house.

"Well, Kirsty," he said, after the first salutations were over, "have
you any objection to turn schoolmistress?"

"I should make a poor hand at that," she answered, with a smile to me
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