But this, sir, was only the first thrashing that I got for "I canna be fashed"--it wasna the last, by a score o' times. My faither was a man that never liked to lay out a shilling where it could be saved; and he always grudged to employ other people to do anything when he thought it could be done within his own house--that is, by the members o' his own family--therefore, about the back end o' spring, or the fore end o' summer, he would have said to us--
"Now, bairns, haud awa to your beds, and before school-time the morn, gang and howe the potatoes, or weed the corn."
I never durst say onything then, but slipped awa to bed very unwillingly--just feeling as if I felt it a trouble to put aff my claes. But before sunrise in the morning, when my brothers would have wakened me, I used to rub my een, and gaunt, and say--
"What!--what!--hoots!--I canna be fashed!"
And my father, frae the ben-a-house, would have cried out, wi' a voice that made the very nails on my fingers shake, "What's that he's saying?--I'll _be fashed_ him!"
Then up I would have got, shrugging my shoulders, and wriggling them frae side to side, and cried peevishly to one, "Where's my stockings?" and to another, "Where's my jacket?"
Then my faither would have cried out again, "_I'll seek_ it for ye!" Then I soon found it, and got out o' the house wi' the rest o' them.
It was precisely the same thing when my brothers used to shake me in a morning, and say--
"Get up, Willie--ye haena your task yet."
I had invariably the same answer for them on such occasions also. I appeared as if naething could drive it out o' me. I have heard auld wives say, if ye were taking infants to ony part o' the globe ye like, and keeping them where they never would hear a human voice, nor speech o' one kind nor anither, that they would speak Hebrew! Now, I verily believe that, if ye had done the same by me--if ye had taken me, when a week auld, into the deserts o' Arawbia, wi' naething but dummies round about me, and not a living soul nor a living thing endowed wi' the power o' speech allowed to see me or come near me--I say, that I verily believe the first words I would have spoken would have been, "_I canna be fashed_!" in guid braid Scotch. The words literally seemed born wi' me. And, as I was telling ye about getting up to learn my tasks in the morning, many, many is the time, in the cauldest day o' winter, that my favourite phrase has caused the tawse to warm my hands, when the fingers o' a' the rest o' the scholars were dinnlin wi' cauld, and they were holding them at their mouths, and blowing their hot breath on them to take out the frost. My faither should have paid no coal-money for me. And more than this, the four insignificant and carelessly-uttered words which I allude to, while I was at school, always kept me near the bottom o' the class; or, if I rose one or two towards the top, it was purely on account o' others having been awa from the school for a day, or half-a-day, and having to take the foot o' the class, on account o' their absence, as a matter o' course. Often and often I could have tripped their heels, and taken my place aboon them--and the teacher kenned it as weel, and many a weary time has he said to me, "Oh, ye stupid stirk! why do ye stand there? why didna ye trap him?"