Will anyone try to save education? The commercial men will use it to further their own plans; the educationists will unconsciously play into the profiteers' hands; the women ... only the other day the suffrage band was marching through the streets of London displaying a huge banner bearing the words "We Want Hughes." Hughes is the Premier of Australia, a Labour man dear to the hearts of all the capitalist newspapers. His one text is "Trade after the War." Who is there to save education? The teaching profession could save it, but teachers are merely servants. They will continue to argue about Compulsory Greek and, no doubt, Compulsory Russian will come up for discussion in the educational papers soon. The commercially-minded gentlemen of Westminster will draw up the new scheme of education, and the teachers will humbly adapt themselves to the new method. I don't think that anyone will save education. IV. I lay on a bank this afternoon smoking. Janet and Jean and Annie came along the road, and they sat down beside me. "I'm tired of the school," said Annie wearily; "Aw wish Aw was fourteen!" "What's wrong now?" I asked. "Oh, we never get any fun now, the new mester's always so strict, and we get an awful lot o' home lessons now." "Annie got the strap on Friday," explained Jean. "Mester Macdonald's braces broke Aw think, at least something broke when he was bending doon and he took an awful red face ... and he had to keep his hands in his pouches till night time to keep his breeks up." "Did Annie pull them down?" I asked. Jean tittered. "No, but she laughed and he gave her the strap." "Aye," cried Annie in delight, "and they nearly cam doon when he was strappin' me!" "Why do awkward incidents occur to dignity?" I said, more to myself than to the bairns, "my braces wouldn't break in fifty years of teaching." Then I laughed. Margaret Thomson came down the road on her way to Evening Service, and she reddened as she passed. "Eh!" laughed Janet, looking up into my face, "did ye see yon? Maggie blushed! Aw wudna wonder if she has a notion o' the Mester!" "How could she help it, Jan?" I said. "Why, you'll be hopelessly in love with me yourself in a couple of years, you besom!" She stared before her vacantly for a little. "Aw did have a notion o' you when ye cam first," she said slowly. I put my arm round her neck. "You dear kid!" I said. She smiled up in my face. "Ye had that bonny striped tie on then," she said artlessly. I pulled her hair. "Ye shud marry Maggie Tamson," she said after a pause. "Aye," added Jean, "and syne ye'll get the farm when her father dies. He's troubled wi' the rheumatics and he'll no live very long. And she wud be a gran worker too." "Dinna haver, Jean," said Annie scornfully, "the Mester will want a gran lady for his wife, one that can play the piano and have ham and egg to her breakfast ilka morning." "No extravagant wife like that for me!" I protested.