“That has naethin’ to dae wi’t,” said he, quickly. “My private disinclination to hae the wee smouts greetin’ disna affect the point at a’. If oor yins needed it, I went oot for a daunder and left the job to Jinnet. A woman’s aye the best hand at it, as I ken by my aunty Chirsty. When she had the threshin’ o’, me, she aye gied me tuppence efter it was done if I grat awfu’ sair, and I took guid care I never went wantin’ money in thae days. I was only vexed she couldna thresh me threepence-worth the time the shows were roond oor wye, and mony’s the time I worked for’t. “When the papers mak’ me wonder whether corporal punishment’s guid for the young or no’, I jist tak’ a look at mysel’ in Jinnet’s new wardrobe looking-gless, and, except for the flet feet--me bein’ a waiter--I don’t see muckle wrang wi’ Erchie MacPherson, and the Lord kens there was nae slackness o’ corporal punishment in his days, though then it was simply ca’d a leatherin’. My mither threshed me because it wadna gae wrang onywye--if I wasna need’nt the noo I wad be need’nt some ither time; and my faither threshed me because there was a hard knot in the laces o’ his boots, and he couldna lowse’t. It didna dae me ony hairm, because I ken’t they were fond enough o’ me. “In the school we were weel threshed in the winter-time to keep us warm, and in the summertime a stirrin’-up wi’ the tawse a’ roond made up for the want o’ ventilation. If I never learned much else in the school, I got a fair grup o’ nai-tural history, and yin o’ the tips I got was that a horse-hair laid across the loof o’ the haund’ll split a cane or cut the fingers aff a tawse, when ye’re struck by either the yin or the ither. I made twa or three cairt-horses bald-heided at the tail wi’ my experimentin’, but somethin’ aye went wrang; the maister either let fly ower sudden, or it was the wrang kind o’ horse--at onyrate, I never mind o’ cuttin’ the cane or the tawse. “Whiles when I’m across at my guid-dochter’s, I hear her wee laddie, Alick, greetin’ ower his coonts, and fear’t the maister’ll cane him because they’re no’ richt. “‘If a cistern wi’ an inlet pipe twa-and-a-half inches in diameter lets in seventy-nine gallons eleeven quarts and seeven pints in twenty-fower and a half’oors, and an ootlet pipe o’ three-quarters o’ an inch diameter discharge forty-eight gallons nineteen quarts and five pints in the six’oors, whit o’clock will the cistern be empty if the ootlet pipe hiz a big leak in’t?’