It was in this year that Patrick Dilworth (he had been schoolmaster
of the parish from the time, as his wife said, of Anna Regina, and
before the Rexes came to the crown), was disabled by a paralytic,
and the heritors, grudging the cost of another schoolmaster as long
as he lived, would not allow the session to get his place supplied,
which was a wrong thing, I must say, of them; for the children of
the parishioners were obliged, therefore, to go to the neighbouring
towns for their schooling, and the custom was to take a piece of
bread and cheese in their pockets for dinner, and to return in the
evening always voracious for more, the long walk helping the natural
crave of their young appetites. In this way Mrs Malcolm's two
eldest laddies, Charlie and Robert, were wont to go to Irville, and
it was soon seen that they kept themselves aloof from the other
callans in the clachan, and had a genteeler turn than the grulshy
bairns of the cottars. Her bit lassies, Kate and Effie, were better
off; for some years before, Nanse Banks had taken up a teaching in a
garret-room of a house, at the corner where John Bayne has biggit
the sclate-house for his grocery-shop. Nanse learnt them reading
and working stockings, and how to sew the semplar, for twal-pennies
a-week. She was a patient creature, well cut out for her calling,
with blear een, a pale face, and a long neck, but meek and contented
withal, tholing the dule of this world with a Christian submission
of the spirit; and her garret-room was a cordial of cleanliness, for
she made the scholars set the house in order, time and time about,
every morning; and it was a common remark for many a day, that the
lassies, who had been at Nanse Banks's school, were always well
spoken of, both for their civility, and the trigness of their houses
when they were afterwards married. In short, I do not know, that in
all the long epoch of my ministry, any individual body did more to
improve the ways of the parishioners, in their domestic concerns,