"And what payment," asked McLean, laughing, "did Tommy demand from Lewis for this service?" "Not a farthing, sir--which gives another uncanny glint into his character. When he wants money there's none so crafty at getting it, but he did this for the pleasure of the thing, or, as he said to Lewis, 'to feel what it would be like.' That, I tell you, is the nature of the sacket, he has a devouring desire to try on other folk's feelings, as if they were so many suits of clothes." "And from your account he makes them fit him too." "My certie, he does, and a lippie in the bonnet more than that." So far the school-master had spoken frankly, even with an occasional grin at his own expense, but his words came reluctantly when he had to speak of Tommy's prospects at the bursary examinations. "I would rather say nothing on that head," he said, almost coaxingly, "for the laddie has a year to reform in yet, and it's never safe to prophesy." "Still I should have thought that you could guess pretty accurately how the boys you mean to send up in a year's time are likely to do? You have had a long experience, and, I am told, a glorious one." "'Deed, there's no denying it," answered the dominie, with a pride he had won the right to wear. "If all the ministers, for instance, I have turned out in this bit school were to come back together, they could hold the General Assembly in the square." He lay back in his big chair, a complacent dominie again. "Guess the chances of my laddies!" he cried, forgetting what he had just said, and that there was a Tommy to bother him. "I tell you, sir, that's a matter on which I'm never deceived, I can tell the results so accurately that a wise Senatus would give my lot the bursaries I say they'll carry, without setting them down to examination-papers at all." And for the next half-hour he was reciting cases in proof of his sagacity. "Wonderful!" chimed in McLean. "I see it is evident you can tell me how Tommy Sandys will do," but at that Cathro's rush of words again subsided into a dribble. "He's the worst Latinist that ever had the impudence to think of bursaries," he groaned. "And his Greek--" asked McLean, helping on the conversation as far as possible. "His Greek, sir, could be packed in a pill-box." "That does not sound promising. But the best mathematicians are sometimes the worst linguists."