When I told Macdonald of the incident he cried: "Yes, but think of the time you wasted!" What's wrong with Macdonald and Macduff is that they know too much to be good teachers. They have nothing to learn. They know all the facts about curriculum subjects; they know exactly what is right and what is wrong; they know that their authority is infallible; they know that swearing is bad, that cap-lifting is good; they know that obedience is a great virtue, that disobedience to their authority is an unforgivable sin. They are the Supermen of education; their attitude to the school is exactly the attitude of Charles I. to his Parliament. They believe in the Divine Right of Dominies. The dominie can do no wrong. Macdonald's bairns consider him something beyond a human being; he knows everything; he is above temptation. He has no weaknesses; his pipe goes into his pocket when he meets a child; he wouldn't allow a child to see him kiss his wife for all the gold in the Bank of England. But there are expectations down at the schoolhouse. And I would almost sell my soul to be in the classroom on the morning when Macdonald enters it with the word paternity writ large on his prim face. I bet my boots that, without saying a single word, he will manage to give the bairns the impression that he had nothing to do with the affair at all. * * * A friend of mine, a Londoner, came to stay the week-end with me. To-day we rambled over the hills, and a pair of new boots began to make my friend's feet take on a separate existence. We were about three miles from home, and the prospect of walking that distance painfully was rather disheartening to him. Luckily Moss-side milk cart came along, and the boy asked us if we wanted a lift to the village; he was taking the day's milk to the station. When we left the cart my friend turned to me in amazement. "Here," he cried, "didn't you give him something?" "Good Lord, no!" I laughed. "Oh, you blooming Scotchman!" he said with fervour. "If I had known I'd have given the chap a tip myself." "I never thought of tipping him," I said, "and if I had I wouldn't have tipped him all the same. You blessed Englishmen can never rise above your stupid feudal idea of rewarding the lower classes. In your south country a countryman is a Lickspittle; he touches his cap to anything with a collar on. We don't breed that kind of specimen in Scotland. That young lad is a stranger to me, but he and you and I were equals; there was no servility about him; he chatted to us as an equal. He expected nothing, and if you had offered him a shilling you would have patronised him, posed as his superior." "But, damn it all, the chap earned a bob!"