“A’ the opportunities in the world,” said Colin the younger, in a burst, “wouldna give me a chance like yon English fellow. Everything comes ready to him. It’s no fair. I’ll have to make up wi’ him first, and then beat him--and so I would,” said the boy, with a glow on his face, and a happy unconsciousness of contradicting himself, “if I had the chance.”
“Well,” said big Colin, “that’s just ane o’ the things we have to count upon in our way of living. It’s little credit to a man to be strong,” said the farmer, stretching his great arms with a natural consciousness of power, “unless he has that to do that tries it. It’s harder work to me, you may be sure, to get a pickle corn off the hillside, than for the English farmers down in yon callant’s country to draw wheat and fatness out o’ their furrows. But I think mysel’ nane the worse a man,” continued Colin of Ramore, with a smile; “Sir Thomas, as the laddie ca’s him, gangs wading over the heather a’ day after the grouse and the paitricks; he thinks he’s playing, himsel’, but he’s as hard at work as I am. We’re a’ bluid relations, though the family likeness whiles lies deep and is hard to find. A man maun be fighting wi’ something. If it’s no the dour earth that refuses him bread, it’s the wet bog and the heather that comes atween him and his sport, as he ca’s it. Never you mind wha’s before you on the road. Make up to him, Colin. Many a day he’ll stray out o’ the path gathering straws to divert himsel’, when you’ve naething to do but to push on.”
“Eh, but I wouldna like a laddie o’ mine to think,” interrupted his mother, eagerly, “that there’s nae guid but getting on in the world. I’ll not have my bairns learn ony such lesson; laddies,” said the farmer’s wife, in all the solemnity of her innocence, “mind you this aboon a’. You might be princes the morn, and no as good men as your father. There’s nae Sir Thomases, nor Earls, nor Lord Chancellors I ever heard tell o’, that was mair thought upon nor wi’ better reason----”
At this moment Jess entered from the kitchen, to suggest that it was bedtime.
“And lang enough for the mistress to be sitting up, and she so delicate,” said the sole servant of the house. “If ye had been in your ain room wi’ a fire and a book to read, it would have been wiser-like, than among a’ thae noisy laddies, wi’ the wean and a seam as if ye were as strong as me. Maister, I wish you would speak to Colin; he’s awfu’ masterfu’; instead of gaun to his bed, like a civilized lad, yonder he is awa’ ben to the kitchen and down by the fire to read his book, till his hair’s like a singed sheep’s-head, and his cheeks like burning peats. Ane canna do a hand’s-turn wi’ a parcel o’ callants about the place day and nicht,” said Jess, in an aggrieved tone.