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It's not a bad thing a while wi' a lass after the horses are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph" his smile broadened until I could see his teeth "if it had been Dauvit the leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep about it. . . . "It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants.
He was dirty, ragged, unkempt, and feeble, but quite sober, and pathetically anxious for human sympathy. "I'm achty-sax year auld, he maundered, apropos of nothing, "achty-sax year auld. I've seen five lairds o' Pettybaw, sax placed meenisters, an' seeven doctors. I was a mason, an' a stoot mon i' thae days, but it's a meeserable life noo. Wife deid, bairns deid!
"Ay, we honor the Queen's meenisters; an' Miss Nightingale, wha nursed the soldiers i' the war; an' Leddy Burdett-Coutts, wha gies a' her siller an' a' her heart to puir folk an' is aye kind to horses and dogs an' singin' birdies; an' we gie the keys to heroes o' the war wha are brave an' faithfu'. An' noo, there's a wee bit beastie.
Meenisters only work yae day a week, an' only aboot two hoors at that. They hae clean claes to wear, a fine white collar every day, an' sae mony claes that they can put on a different rig-oot every day. Their work is no' hard, an' look at the pay they get; no' like your faither wi' his two or three shillin's a day.
"Ay, Robin," she replied, "that's true; but for it a', you maun admit that the schoolmaister an' the meenister hae the best o' it." But she felt that her counter was not very effective. "My faither says meenisters are nae guid to the world, but schoolmaisters are," said the boy, with a grudging admission for the teaching profession. "But I dinna care. I'd raither gang to work.
"Oh well, indeed," said Duncan Polite, "it would be a clever sermon, Andra, and I would be thinking he gave us some fine thoughts on Paul." "Paul!" cried the other with withering scorn. "Paul! and who sent out meenisters to preach Paul?" Duncan could not answer.
He's done at forty years auld," she said, as if she did not wish to heed what he said, "but meenisters an' schoolmaisters, an' folk o' that kin', leeve a gey lang while. Look at the easy time they hae to what a collier has. They dinna get up at five o'clock in the mornin' like your faither. They rise aboot eight, an' start work at nine.
Twa meenisters cam' in his time, and Domsie put Geordie Hoo or some ither gleg laddie, that was makin' for college, thro' his facin's, and maybe some bit lassie brocht her copybuke. Syne they had their dinner, and Domsie tae, wi' the Doctor. Man, a've often thocht it was the prospeck o' the Schule Board and its weary bit rules that feenished Domsie.
Whenever we traverse the halls we are obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washing-day repasts in suburban America. "Is it spring house-cleaning?" I ask Mistress M'Collop. "Na, na," she replies hurriedly; "it's the meenisters." On the 19th of May we are a maiden castle no longer.
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