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<h2> CHAPTER IX </h2>
<h3> We Learn Other Things </h3>
<p>We were more than ever at the farm now. During the summer, from the time
we got up till the time we went to bed, we seldom approached the manse. I
have heard it hinted that my father neglected us. But that can hardly be,
seeing that then his word was law to us, and now I regard his memory as
the symbol of the love unspeakable. My elder brother Tom always had his
meals with him, and sat at his lessons in the study. But my father did not
mind the younger ones running wild, so long as there was a Kirsty for them
to run to; and indeed the men also were not only friendly to us, but
careful over us. No doubt we were rather savage, very different in our
appearance from town-bred children, who are washed and dressed every time
they go out for a walk: that we should have considered not merely a
hardship, but an indignity. To be free was all our notion of a perfect
existence. But my father's rebuke was awful indeed, if he found even the
youngest guilty of untruth, or cruelty, or injustice. At all kinds of
escapades, not involving disobedience, he smiled, except indeed there were
too much danger, when he would warn and limit.</p>
<p>A town boy may wonder what we could find to amuse us all day long; but the
fact is almost everything was an amusement, seeing that when we could not
take a natural share in what was going on, we generally managed to invent
some collateral employment fictitiously related to it. But he must not
think of our farm as at all like some great farm he may happen to know in
England; for there was nothing done by machinery on the place. There may
be great pleasure in watching machine-operations, but surely none to equal
the pleasure we had. If there had been a steam engine to plough my
father's fields, how could we have ridden home on its back in the evening?
To ride the horses home from the plough was a triumph. Had there been a
thrashing- machine, could its pleasures have been comparable to that of
lying in the straw and watching the grain dance from the sheaves under the
skilful flails of the two strong men who belaboured them? There was a
winnowing-machine, but quite a tame one, for its wheel I could drive
myself—the handle now high as my head, now low as my knee—and
watch at the same time the storm of chaff driven like drifting snowflakes
from its wide mouth. Meantime the oat-grain was flowing in a silent slow
stream from the shelving hole in the other side, and the wind, rushing
through the opposite doors, aided the winnower by catching at the expelled
chaff, and carrying it yet farther apart. I think I see old Eppie now,
filling her sack with what the wind blew her; not with the grain: Eppie
did not covet that; she only wanted her bed filled with fresh springy
chaff, on which she would sleep as sound as her rheumatism would let her,
and as warm and dry and comfortable as any duchess in the land that
happened to have the rheumatism too. For comfort is inside more than
outside; and eider down, delicious as it is, has less to do with it than
some people fancy. How I wish all the poor people in the great cities
could have good chaff beds to lie upon! Let me see: what more machines are
there now? More than I can tell. I saw one going in the fields the other
day, at the use of which I could only guess. Strange, wild-looking,
mad-like machines, as the Scotch would call them, are growling and
snapping, and clinking and clattering over our fields, so that it seems to
an old boy as if all the sweet poetic twilight of things were vanishing
from the country; but he reminds himself that God is not going to sleep,
for, as one of the greatest poets that ever lived says, <i>he slumbereth
not nor sleepeth</i>; and the children of the earth are his, and he will
see that their imaginations and feelings have food enough and to spare. It
is his business this—not ours. So the work must be done as well as
it can. Then, indeed, there will be no fear of the poetry.</p>
<p>I have just alluded to the pleasure of riding the horses, that is, the
work-horses: upon them Allister and I began to ride, as far as I can
remember, this same summer—not from the plough, for the ploughing
was in the end of the year and the spring. First of all we were allowed to
take them at watering-time, watched by one of the men, from the stable to
the long trough that stood under the pump. There, going hurriedly and
stopping suddenly, they would drop head and neck and shoulders like a
certain toy-bird, causing the young riders a vague fear of falling over
the height no longer defended by the uplifted crest; and then drink and
drink till the riders' legs felt the horses' bodies swelling under them;
then up and away with quick refreshed stride or trot towards the paradise
of their stalls. But for us came first the somewhat fearful pass of the
stable door, for they never stopped, like better educated horses, to let
their riders dismount, but walked right in, and there was just room, by
stooping low, to clear the top of the door. As we improved in equitation,
we would go afield, to ride them home from the pasture, where they were
fastened by chains to short stakes of iron driven into the earth. There
was more of adventure here, for not only was the ride longer, but the
horses were more frisky, and would sometimes set off at the gallop. Then
the chief danger was again the door, lest they should dash in, and knock
knees against posts and heads against lintels, for we had only halters to
hold them with. But after I had once been thrown from back to neck, and
from neck to ground in a clumsy but wild gallop extemporized by Dobbin, I
was raised to the dignity of a bridle, which I always carried with me when
we went to fetch them. It was my father's express desire that until we
could sit well on the bare back we should not be allowed a saddle. It was
a whole year before I was permitted to mount his little black riding mare,
called Missy. She was old, it is true—nobody quite knew how old she
was—but if she felt a light weight on her back, either the spirit of
youth was contagious, or she fancied herself as young as when she thought
nothing of twelve stone, and would dart off like the wind. In after years
I got so found of her, that I would stand by her side flacking the flies
from her as she grazed; and when I tired of that, would clamber upon her
back, and lie there reading my book, while she plucked on and ground and
mashed away at the grass as if nobody were near her.</p>
<p>Then there was the choice, if nothing else were found more attractive, of
going to the field where the cattle were grazing. Oh! the rich hot summer
afternoons among the grass and the clover, the little lamb-daisies, and
the big horse-daisies, with the cattle feeding solemnly, but one and
another straying now to the corn, now to the turnips, and recalled by
stern shouts, or, if that were unavailing, by vigorous pursuit and even
blows! If I had been able to think of a mother at home, I should have been
perfectly happy. Not that I missed her then; I had lost her too young for
that. I mean that the memory of the time wants but that to render it
perfect in bliss. Even in the cold days of spring, when, after being shut
up all the winter, the cattle were allowed to revel again in the springing
grass and the venturesome daisies, there was pleasure enough in the
company and devices of the cowherd, a freckle-faced, white-haired,
weak-eyed boy of ten, named—I forget his real name: we always called
him Turkey, because his nose was the colour of a turkey's egg. Who but
Turkey knew mushrooms from toadstools? Who but Turkey could detect
earth-nuts—and that with the certainty of a truffle-hunting dog? Who
but Turkey knew the note and the form and the nest and the eggs of every
bird in the country? Who but Turkey, with his little whip and its lash of
brass wire, would encounter the angriest bull in Christendom, provided he
carried, like the bulls of Scotland, his most sensitive part, the nose,
foremost? In our eyes Turkey was a hero. Who but Turkey could discover the
nests of hens whose maternal anxiety had eluded the <i>finesse</i> of
Kirsty? and who so well as he could roast the egg with which she always
rewarded such a discovery? Words are feeble before the delight we
experienced on such an occasion, when Turkey, proceeding to light a fire
against one of the earthen walls which divided the fields, would send us
abroad to gather sticks and straws and whatever outcast combustibles we
could find, of which there was a great scarcity, there being no woods or
hedges within reach. Who like Turkey could rob a wild bee's nest? And who
could be more just than he in distributing the luscious prize? In fine,
his accomplishments were innumerable. Short of flying, we believed him
capable of everything imaginable.</p>
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<p>What rendered him yet dearer to us, was that there was enmity between him
and Mrs. Mitchell. It came about in this way. Although a good milker, and
therefore of necessity a good feeder, Hawkie was yet upon temptation
subject to the inroads of an unnatural appetite. When she found a piece of
an old shoe in the field, she would, if not compelled to drop the
delicious mouthful, go on, the whole morning or afternoon, in the
impossibility of a final deglutition, chewing and chewing at the savoury
morsel. Should this have happened, it was in vain for Turkey to hope
escape from the discovery of his inattention, for the milk-pail would that
same evening or next morning reveal the fact to Kirsty's watchful eyes.
But fortunately for us, in so far as it was well to have an ally against
our only enemy, Hawkie's morbid craving was not confined to old shoes. One
day when the cattle were feeding close by the manse, she found on the
holly-hedge which surrounded it, Mrs. Mitchell's best cap, laid out to
bleach in the sun. It was a tempting morsel—more susceptible of
mastication than shoe-leather. Mrs. Mitchell, who had gone for another
freight of the linen with which she was sprinkling the hedge, arrived only
in time to see the end of one of its long strings gradually disappearing
into Hawkie's mouth on its way after the rest of the cap, which had gone
the length of the string farther. With a wild cry of despair she flew at
Hawkie, so intent on the stolen delicacy as to be more open to a surprise
than usual, and laying hold of the string, drew from her throat the
deplorable mass of pulp to which she had reduced the valued gaud. The same
moment Turkey, who had come running at her cry, received full in his face
the slimy and sloppy extract. Nor was this all, for Mrs. Mitchell flew at
him in her fury, and with an outburst of abuse boxed his ears soundly,
before he could recover his senses sufficiently to run for it. The
degradation of this treatment had converted Turkey into an enemy before
ever he knew that we also had good grounds for disliking her. His opinion
concerning her was freely expressed to us if to no one else, generally in
the same terms. He said she was as bad as she was ugly, and always spoke
of her as <i>the old witch</i>.</p>
<p>But what brought Turkey and us together more than anything else, was that
he was as fond of Kirsty's stories as we were; and in the winter
especially we would sit together in the evening, as I have already said,
round her fire and the great pot upon it full of the most delicious
potatoes, while Kirsty knitted away vigorously at her blue broad-ribbed
stockings, and kept a sort of time to her story with the sound of her
needles. When the story flagged, the needles went slower; in the more
animated passages they would become invisible for swiftness, save for a
certain shimmering flash that hovered about her fingers like a dim
electric play; but as the story approached some crisis, their motion would
at one time become perfectly frantic, at another cease altogether, as
finding the subject beyond their power of accompanying expression. When
they ceased, we knew that something awful indeed was at hand.</p>
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<p>In my next chapter I will give a specimen of her stories, choosing one
which bears a little upon an after adventure.</p>
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