CHAPTER XXVI .-- BENJIE ON THE CARPET.
It's no in titles, nor in rank-- It's no in wealth, like Lon'on bank, To purchase peace and rest; It's no in making muckle _mair_-- It's no in books--it's no in lear, To make us truly blest.
BURNS.
It is a most wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles of infancy--to say nothing of the spaining-brash and the teeth-cutting; and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years produces.

Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a wee bit smout of a wean, with long linty locks and docked petticoats, toddled but and ben, with a coral gumstick tied round his waist with a bit knitten; and now, after he had been at Dominie Threshem's for four years, he had learned to read Barrie's Collection almost as well as the master could do for his lugs; and was up to all manner of accounts, from simple addition and the multiplication-table, even to vulgar fractions, and all the lave of them.
At the yearly examination of the school-room by the Presbytery and Maister Wiggie, he aye sat at the head of the form, and never failed getting a clap on the head and a wheen carvies.

They that are fathers will not wonder that this made me as proud as a peacock; but when they asked his name, and found whose son he was, then the matter seemed to cease being a business of wonder, as nobody could suppose that an only bairn, born to me in lawful wedlock, could be a dult.

Folk's cleverness--at least I should think so--lies in their pows; and, that allowed, Benjie's was a gey droll one, being of the most remarkable sort of a shape ye ever saw; but, what is more to the purpose both here and hereafter, he was a real good-hearted callant, though as gleg as a hawk and as sharp as a needle.

Everybody that had the smallest gumption prophesied that he would be a real clever one; nor could we grudge that we took pains in his rearing--he having been like a sucking-turkey, or a hot-house plant from far away, delicate in the constitution--when we saw that the debt was likely to be paid with bank-interest, and that, by his uncommon cleverality, the callant was to be a credit to our family.
Many and long were the debates between his fond mother and me, what trade we would breed him up to--for the matter now became serious, Benjie being in his thirteenth year; and, though a wee bowed in the near leg, from a suppleness about his knee-joint, nevertheless as active as a hatter, and fit for any calling whatsoever under the sun.