“You’ve surely got out sooner this afternoon, Alan,” said she as I entered the cottage. One look at my mother’s face showed me she knew something was wrong. I sat down beside her, showed her the wales on my hands, and told her the whole story. No matter what trouble I might get into, I could always go to her in the full assurance of receiving the sympathy that my case needed, and perhaps more than it deserved. If I was in the wrong, who could point out the fault, so gently and yet so convincingly, as she! “Preserve me, laddie,” she said, “the master’s been ower sair on ye the day. We’ll say as little aboot it as possible, for ye see ye were in the wrang, and ye ken, Alan, I wad be the last to approve of your disobeying Mr. Angus, even if he is a bit narrow-minded and tyrannical. I’ll call in and see him this evening, and we’ll get a’thing made right.” And so she did. The harshness and severity of the master could not stand against my mother’s gentle persuasiveness. I never heard what she said to Mr. Angus, but I can remember, many years afterwards when I went to visit him, he asked for my mother and said: “Ye were blessed in a good mother, Alan; I never was in her presence yet but I felt a better man for it. No one could be merrier than she; and yet with it all there was an atmosphere of unconscious saintliness ever about her that had a wonderful influence upon everyone who knew her.” When I returned to school on the following day nothing was said of my escapade. In the playground there were some who would have liked to lionize me as a bit of a hero, but somehow or other I shrank from any reference to the subject.