It's bred and born and welded in them.

Ye'll just have the burrs and seeds amang the wool if ye keep losing a smart shearer for the sake o' a wheen cards and dice; and ye'll mak' nae heed of convairtin' thae young caterans ony mair than ye'll change a Norroway falcon into a barn-door chuckie.' I wonder if what he said was true--if we couldn't help it; if it was in our blood?
It seems like it; and yet it's hard lines to think a fellow must grow up and get on the cross in spite of himself, and come to the gallows-foot at last, whether he likes it or not.

The parson here isn't bad at all.

He's a man and a gentleman, too; and he's talked and read to me by the hour.

I suppose some of us chaps are like the poor stupid tribes that the Israelites found in Canaan, only meant to live for a bit and then to be rubbed out to make room for better people.
When the shearing was nearly over we had a Saturday afternoon to ourselves.