Part 13

Chapter 132,710 wordsPublic domain

"Do we make ourselves clear, Mr. Tennant? As you know well the State will be terribly unwilling to give us more money. If we make our schools decent places the poor profiteers will be in the soup, won't they? Our present schools do no harm; the discipline of the classroom prepares a bright lad for the discipline of the wagery shop, and, of course, a girl accustomed to the atmosphere of a city school won't object to the ventilation obtaining in the factory. When we insist on taking the kiddies to bonny wee schools the profiteer will realise with dismay that his factory and his slum-hovels will have to adapt themselves to the new attitude of the kids.

"Mind you, we quite admit that we're going to have a hell of a fight. We even go the length of saying that we may be beaten at first; for we have no economic power, and the men with the economic power will crush us if they can. Our only weapon will be the strike, but even the strike will, in a manner, be playing into the profiteers' hands; 'Geewhiz!' they'll cry, 'the teachers are on strike ... now for cheap child labour!' Our only hope is that the citizens will realise the importance of a dominies' rebellion.

"Now, we don't want you to take this letter as a personal insult, or even as a vote of censure. You may be of opinion that Scots education is quite safe in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland, and you may imagine that we've got profiteering on the brain. We have. But we can't agree with you that education is safe in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland. Why, you might get another post to-morrow, and your colleague Runciman might step into your job. And it was only the other day that he was defending war-profits on the ground that they were forming a fund to compete with neutral trade after the war. The worst of you political fellows is that you've all got profiteering on the brain, just like us ... only, it's a natural healthy growth in your case, while in our case it is a malignant tumour. We've got profiteering thrust upon us, so to speak; you fellows were born with it.

"Well, well, isn't this rotten weather, what?

"Best wishes to Mrs. Tennant.

"Yours sincerely, "The Educational Institute of Scotland."

* * *

Jim came to the bothy last night, and his face was troubled.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Aw--Aw didna gie ye a marriage present," he stammered, "Aw didna hae ony money."

"The present Margaret and I want from you doesn't cost money," I said; "we want you to write a description of the wedding."

He brightened at once.

"Can Aw tell lees?" he asked eagerly.

"Please yourself," I said, and he went away cheerful.

This morning the description came by post. I think I shall make it the last entry in my diary.

* * *

THE MARRIAGE OF MR. NEILL AND MAGGIE THOMSON.

By JAMES JACKSON, Esq., B.M. (Best Man).

They were married on Friday and I was the best man. Janet and Annie and Jean and Gladys and Ellen were the bridesmaids, but they were too many to kiss. They got a present each, a ring with diamonds in it, but I don't think the diamonds were real ones. I got a knife with four blades and a corkscrew and a file and a thing for taking things out of horses' feet, and I had a fight with Geordie Brown for saying it didn't have a pair of scissors in it and I licked him, but there was no scissors in it.

Their was a lot of people their and some of the women was crying and we got apple-pie and plum-duff for our dinner.

Maggie had a white dress on and Mr. Neill had a black soot on with tails on the coat and a big wide waistcoat but you couldn't see the end of his dickey for I looked. He had cuffs on too. I liked the plum-duff, but I liked the wedding cake best but you only got a little bit of it. The girls kept their bit to sleep on and have nice dreams but I ate mine and had dreams too but they were not nice dreams. I dreamt that an elephant was sitting on my head.

I had a ride on the dickey to fetch the people and there was a white ribbon on the whip and the horses was gray. I had to scatter the pennies and sweeties and Tommy Sword threw a bit of earth at me and I would have fought him but I didn't want to clorty my clean dickey.

The marriage seramany was not very interesting and I had to carry the ring and it was in my waistcoat pooch but I pretended to look first in my breek pooches and had to empty them on the table. I just wanted them to see my new knife.

I made a speech about the bridesmaids and I said they were all very nice girls but they are not for Janet is always fighting with me, she will make an awful wife when she is married.

The happy cupel went away in a moter for there honeymoon but they came back again at night and Geordie Brown says that it was a tinker's marriage because he did not have enough money to go in the train. Martha Findlay said that they came back because he was ashamed to take Maggie to London because she is just a farmer's daughter and I told her she was wrong because they came back because he gets a sixpenny paper sent by the post every Saturday morning and he would have had to buy one to read in the train, but I don't think she believed me, she is a jelus cat and she is just wild because Maggie has got a man.

There was a party at night and I drank seven bottles of lemonade and Frank Thomson sang a song and Peter MacMannish tried to sing a song at the same time and Mrs. Thomson told me to put the bottle at the other end of the table, they were not very good singers, Peter sang five songs after one another so Mrs. Thomson told me to put the bottle beside him again and he stopped singing. He did not sing again but he went round telling everybody that he was not drunk though nobody said he was. I always thought that he was a very stern man but I liked him at the dance.

Mr. Macdonald was there but he did not sing and he did not get a drink out of the bottle but Mrs. Thomson took him into the parlour and then she came back for the bottle. After that he was a nice man not like he is in the school, he was laughing and dancing like anything. He was in the parlour four times.

Then we sang Auld Lang Syne and Peter McMannish said he would sing it by himself just to show us that he was not drunk but he fell asleep before he got started to the first verse.

After it was finished the happy cupel went over to the bothy to there honeymoon and Martha Findlay said it made the marriage common and that anybody could have a bothy for a honeymoon, so I just said to her "Oh, aye, Martha, ye'll likely spend your own honeymoon in a bothy but you won't get an M.A. with a dickey that you canna see the end of for a man, but Margaret deserved him for she is so bonny." Martha was awful wild at me.

Geordie Brown says that the best man at the marriage has to hold the baby at the christnin but it does not say anything in the etikquette book, and I telt him he was a liar. He said it would maybe be twins and I got a black eye but he lost three teeth. I hop it will not be twins because I said I would give Geordie my knife if it was twins.

P.S.--Please do not have the twins.

THE END.